Friday night saw the 2012 Stand Up To Cancer telecast take place at The Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. This star-studded event included Sofia Vergara, Chelsea Handler, Eric Stonestreet, Ty Burrell and many others.
One of the most moving tributes given during the event was Taylor Swift’s performance of her new song, Ronan. The song was inspired after Swift read a blog last year about four year old Ronan who was battled cancer, and who died. As the lyrics said, “You were my best four years. I remember your bare feet down the hallway, I love you to the move and back.”
The ultimate goal of Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) is to “bring together the best and the brightest in the cancer community, encouraging collaboration instead of competition.” They encourage collaboration, offering financing to multi-disciplinary research teams across the country.
They explain on their website that, “’Dream Teams’ of cancer researchers are already hard at work because of Stand Up To Cancer’s support. A portion of our funds also go to innovative, high-risk, high-reward cancer research being done by individual investigators and their lab teams. This work, which is often not supported by conventional funding sources, has the potential to dramatically improve the lives of cancer patients.”