College Cyclists Visit Ochsner Cancer Patients

Texas 4000 rolls into New Orleans and donates $20,000 to help Ochsner patients access novel new therapies

Twenty-one riders of the Texas 4000 stopped in New Orleans from Sunday, June 10, to Tuesday, June 12, to visit adult and pediatric patients at the Gayle and Tom Benson Cancer Center at Ochsner Medical Center. This year, the riders delivered a $20,000 gift for patient assistance designed to help eligible patients participate in Ochsner’s Precision Cancer Therapies Program.

The riders, students from the University of Texas, toured the Cancer Center and took meals with patients, their families, physicians, staff and University of Queensland-Ochsner Clinical School medical students. The Texas 4000 is the longest annual charity bike ride in the world. Riders begin in Austin, Texas and follow one of three routes to finish the 4,000-mile ride in Anchorage, Alaska. Many ride on behalf of family members who have battled cancer; a few in honor of their own struggles with the disease.

Ochsner’s Precision Cancer Therapies Program, in partnership with research non-profit TGen, is the Gulf South’s only center dedicated to bringing early phase cancer clinical trials to patients in the region. This partnership allows Ochsner to genetically test an individual patient’s cancer and pair it to a specific therapy that could be more effective in treating their particular disease.

For more information about cancer care at Ochsner, visit www.ochsner.org/cancer.

Please follow us on social media: Facebook: Ochsner Hospital for Children or Twitter: @OchsnerHealth