Mission Statement
The Nicki Leach Foundation’s primary mission is to honor Nicki’s request “to find a way to help young adults who have cancer.” Nicki lost her life to cancer at 19.
The National Cancer Institute identifies young adults (AYA) as someone diagnosed with cancer between the ages of 15-39. “About 70,000 adolescents and young adults receive an unexpected cancer diagnosis every year.”
Our mission is to raise financial support for research leading to new discoveries and treatments for young adults cancers. We would also like to continue our annual educational grant award to one young adult per year if we have enough funding. Thank you for supporting our mission so that we can continue our efforts to find new treatments leading to cures for AYA cancers.
The REACT Study
If you were diagnosed with cancer between ages 18 and 49, please share your experiences in a confidential, 30-minute online survey to help us learn more about how cancer and its treatments may impact reproductive health, here: www.thereactstudy.org.
With the Reproductive Health After Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment (REACT) Study, the Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center hopes to gather valuable information from individuals like you that will help us to better understand the highest needs and concerns are related to reproductive health—specifically for individuals diagnosed with a cancer before age 50.
The Nicki Leach Endowed Scholarship
We’re not accepting applications for assistance at this time.
We are partnering with the UNIVERSITY of NORTH FLORIDA to offer the Nicki Leach Foundation Endowed Scholarship.
If you are a student at UNF or if you will be enrolling at UNF and are interested in applying please send us a message through our contact here.
Glioblastoma Drug Discovery Group
The GBM Drug Discovery Group, a team of researchers in the lab of Dr. Madan Kwatra at Duke University, have formed a collaboration with the Nicki Leach Foundation. We conduct research on a subtype of Glioblastoma (GBM) prevalent in adolescents and young adults. This partnership will enable our research team to start developing novel preclinical models for brain tumors isolated from GBM patients between the ages of 18 and 39. This variety of GBM has affected young adults, like Nicki Leach, Brittany Maynard, and Joe Biden’s son, Beau. These tumors are biologically distinct from tumors found in older patients, and sufficient preclinical models for effective drug development do not currently exist. Together as a team we will work to find efficacious therapies for young adults with glioblastoma. You can see Dr. Kwatra’s GBM research here: http://sites.duke.edu/glioblastoma/.
What Do Young Adults With Cancer Do With Funding?
New Book: Breathing New Life
Bunny Leach is a life coach who believes that happiness is a choice. In 2005, after enduring the death of her beautiful, talented nineteen-year old daughter from brain cancer, and the dissolution of the marriage after twenty-five years, she had to find new life.
Through her work Bunny has helped numerous individuals overcome major obstacles, reestablish self-esteem, and find new hope and meaning in the midst of transition. Breathing New Life is Bunny’s second book, a follow up to Letting Nicki Go: A Mother’s Journey Through Her Daughter’s Cancer. Her books give hope for those who have lost loved ones, or for anyone who has suffered major hardships in life.
Purchase “Letting Nicki Go”
At one time, Bunny’s life seemed perfect. After her husband retired from the professional tennis circuit, where they traveled with their two children around the world, they packed up and moved to paradise, Florida. But when their sixteen-year-old daughter was diagnosed with cancer, paradise quickly turned into a nightmare.
As the family drifted apart, Bunny put her faith in God and fought for her daughter’s life. Letting Nicki Go, a mother’s gripping memoir, is sure to tug at heart strings as she recounts her daughter’s battle against brain cancer and her fight to be happy again.