Renville County, Minn. advocates take on colon cancer research

At the Masonic Cancer Center (MCC), University of Minnesota, our team of doctors, scientists, educators, and community health advocates has worked for over 30 years to reduce the burden of cancer on Minnesotans by advancing knowledge and enhancing care. Every day, our researchers devise, study, trial, and evaluate new ways to detect cancer earlier than ever, create new therapies that save lives and improve patient quality of life, support survivors and their families and caregivers, and prevent cancer all together. With about half of all Minnesotans projected to be diagnosed with cancer at some point during their lifetime, our work is crucial for all who call Minnesota home. 

Although we are located in the Twin Cities, our researchers and doctors interact with cancer survivors and community members from across the state who want to thank them for their work and support their research. As a result, they have built some heartwarming relationships with hundreds of communities here in the Twin Cities, throughout Greater Minnesota, and even across the world! 

These relationships help our doctors and researchers continually learn and better understand the realities around health risks and cancer burden in communities across Minnesota. It’s this kind of relationship with a special community group in western Minnesota that continues to inspire MCC’s Dr. Silvia Balbo, a co-leader for the cancer center’s carcinogenesis and chemoprevention program. 

Dr. Balbo studies the interaction between DNA and chemicals to investigate how lifestyle and environmental exposures cause disease. A key part of Dr. Balbo’s research deals with something called biomarkers—signs and signals in the human body that alert doctors to the presence of a disease, infection, or environmental exposure. Dr. Balbo and her team are focused on studying how to find more of these biomarkers to detect cancer in humans before it becomes advanced, as well as to identify groups of people who may be at higher risk for particular types of cancers.

This research resonated deeply with a group of volunteers and cancer support advocates located in Renville County, Minnesota, about two hours west of the Twin Cities. The group, known as The Renville County Walk in the Park, has been raising funds on their own for years to support newly-diagnosed cancer patients in their community by providing “bags of blessing” filled with thoughtful gifts to aid their newly diagnosed neighbors along their cancer journey. 

These bags consist of a journal, seat belt comfort pad, tea, snacks, toiletries, coloring book, pencils, socks, soothing lavender pillow, homemade quilt from local quilters, and other items. The group also assists survivors in Renville County by reimbursing some of their medical expenses and helping with gas and hotel stays for those who need to travel for their care.

Looking to pair their support for patient care with support for cancer research, the group was connected to Dr. Balbo and her team, who were kicking off some research projects on lung and colon cancer—two cancers that have greatly impacted Renville County, made up of the communities of Bird Island, Buffalo Lake, Danube, Fairfax, Franklin, Hector, Morton, Olivia, Renville, and Sacred Heart. 

Since they first connected, Walk In the Park’s relationship with Dr. Balbo and her team has grown exponentially, complete with regular visits from Dr. Balbo’s team to Walk In the Park community events. As the relationship blossomed, so too did Walk In the Park’s desire to support more of Dr. Balbo’s research.

“Our community has been comforted by Dr. Balbo and her team’s dedication,” says Sara Maher, executive director of the Renville County Walk in the Park. “Their committed relationship to us has brought forth an incredible education for us both. We are learning so much from each other." 

Sara adds: "Dr. Balbo and her team commute through over 100 miles of cornfields to meet and talk with our survivors, teams, and donors. In turn, our survivors and donors are given the opportunity to tour the lab and have one-on-one time with her and ask some hard questions. Dr. Balbo continues to update us about the research she and her team are doing, and the papers she has published within the cancer community. Our donors, in our small county of 14,723 people, are making a difference in cancer research globally, and right here at home.” 

As of September 2024, the group has provided a whopping $150,000 in donations to Dr. Balbo’s research! “This funding that they have generously provided for me and my team has allowed us to be very flexible and to bring in new technology that we could not access before,” says Dr. Balbo. 

Dr. Balbo adds: “Using the financial support they have provided, we have purchased new equipment that the University never had before, which gave us so much critical, new data that helped further our research.” 

The new data coming from this technology supported the connection of Dr. Balbo and team with the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organization (W.H.O.). From there, the team’s discoveries on the role of inflammation in lung carcinogenesis, will help inform lung cancer prevention and early detection efforts across the globe. And it all started with a small Minnesota community’s generosity! 

In their early research in collaboration with Dr. Balskus’s research team at Harvard, Dr. Balbo and her lab had discovered a biomarker from mutated E. coli that has been associated with colon cancer. This early research was conducted in animal models, leaving Dr. Balbo and her team curious about whether this same biomarker would also be associated with colon cancer in humans. 

Thanks to the generous support of Renville County Walk in the Park, Dr. Balbo’s team was able to look through bio-samples collected in collaboration with MCC researcher Alexander Khoruts, a gastrointestinal specialist in the U of M Medical School. Together, they were able to find evidence of this same biomarker in humans, potentially pinpointing a new diagnostic tool for colon cancer. 

“We are proud to be part of a cancer center that is really speeding up the time it takes to get new research from what we call the bench, or the laboratory, to the bedside—to patients,” says Dr. Balbo. She adds, “The work we do in the lab connects with the work our doctors are doing in cancer clinics in a very effective way, not just with clinical trials but also with this discovery piece. There are not many places like the Masonic Cancer Center where a collaborative environment ensures that lab-based research can immediately connect with clinical research to have a positive impact on patients.” 

Even though Dr. Balbo and team don’t yet have all the answers, they now have the right tools to dive deeper in their research on this area of colon cancer detection, thanks in large part to the generosity of Renville County Walk in the Park. 

As Dr. Balbo says: “There’s so much that can be done with a gift of any size to bring in innovation, and the impact on communities is priceless.”  

Your generosity powers hope and healing. Make a donation to support our cancer research today.