About Us
The Gallbladder Cancer Foundation was founded by Sanjeev Kumar as a result of helping his mother through her Stage 4 gallbladder cancer journey. Sanjeev realized there weren’t many organized resources and support out there for gallbladder cancer patients. Although his mother is lucky to be MSI-High and has responded well to immunotherapy (See Patient Journey for more details) he understood that better treatments need to be developed for all patients fighting this very rare and aggressive cancer.
Sanjeev saw the amazing work that Stacie Lindsey and her team have done with the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation and basically wanted to emulate it for gallbladder cancer. Thus the Gallbladder Cancer Foundation was formed in 2024 and formally launched on Biliary Tract Cancer Awareness Day on February 10th, 2025.
Scientific & Medical Advisory Board
Founded 2024
Launched February 2025
Lotus Symbol
The lotus flower is a spiritual symbol in Hinduism and Buddhism. It represents purity, hope, strength, resilience, enlightenment, and overcoming adversity. Each night the lotus closes its flowers and submerges into the muddy water. In the morning it miraculously re-blooms without residue on its petals. Like the lotus flower the Gallbladder Cancer Foundation aims to emerge from the mud that is gallbladder cancer and give hope to patients.
Vision
To build a strong community of patients, caregivers, volunteers, researchers, clinicians, and industry partners that work together towards the common goal of finding a cure for gallbladder cancer.
Mission
Support patients & caregivers and raise funds for gallbladder cancer research in order to develop more efficacious treatments with the hope of finding cures for gallbladder cancer.
Values
- Patients First
- Community
- Scientific progress
- Fiscal responsibility
- Transparency
- Continuous improvement
Working Towards Cures
- Sanjeev Kumar (Founder & CEO)
The Gallbladder Cancer Foundation’s mission is to provide resources and support to patients and caregivers, as well as raise funds for gallbladder cancer research in order to find cures for gallbladder cancer. But what does finding cures mean exactly? And why not a single cure?
Cancer is a very complex disease and it’s unlikely that one single treatment will cure gallbladder cancer for all patients. Gallbladder cancer tumors can have different molecular profiles and each patient has their own unique biology, different tumor microenvironments, and can respond differently to treatments. With personalized medicine doctors can utilize a patient’s biomarkers to give them the best treatment options possible. These cures in my opinion are going to consist of multiple breakthroughs for different tumor profiles. A patient who has high microsatellite instability (MSI-H) is expected to respond well to checkpoint inhibitor immunotherapy. Patients with RET, BRAF, KRAS, NTRK, and HER2 mutations require different targeted therapy strategies. Cellular immunotherapy (CAR-T, CAR-NK, CAR-M, TILs, TCR-T) is another promising field that may open up additional opportunities for cures.
Another strategy is to continuously develop more and more efficacious treatments that can stop or significantly slow down cancer growth/progression in order to extend life long enough so that cancer becomes a chronic disease, similar to a strategy used in prostate cancer. This would not be a “cure” in the traditional sense, but gallbladder cancer would become something patients would die with and not from. Developing treatments with minimal side effects that allow patients to maintain quality of life would be an important part of this strategy.
Proactive measures are also key, and in an ideal world there would be a reliable diagnostic biomarker that could help identify high risk patients early on so gallbladder cancer can be cured by removing the gallbladder before the cancer has a chance to spread.
A lot of work needs to be done in this field, and our organization will do its best to support gallbladder cancer research to work towards finding cures for this rare and aggressive cancer so that no patient is left behind.