General Information

On December 30, 2022 we were awarded a $500 donation from the Woodward Charitable Trust. We were also invited to their distribution reception where we were able to mingle among other non-profit recipients and meet the leaders and committee members who had a hand in picking our foundation. The Woodward Charitable Trust was established in 1947 as an independent trust designated specifically for charitable purposes.  Each year interest earned by the Trust is distributed to charitable organizations that serve the needs of the communities in which the company operates.  Woodward is an independent designer, manufacturer and service provider of energy control and optimization solutions for aerospace and industrial markets. For 150 years, Woodward has focused its resources and expertise on delivering proven systems that perform under incredible demands. We are grateful for their generosity.

Our foundation’s wish was to help/bless others who have been faced with the dreadful diagnosis of a blood cancer…in Michelle’s memory. Had Michelle beat her leukemia (and all the complications) that took her life, this is what she would have wanted to do. We now believe she puts great caring people in our paths to do this…. We are beyond grateful to have received a very generous donation from the Peter C and Emajean Cook Foundation (Thanks Laura & Paul) for us to do exactly what Michelle’s wanted us to do…help others. Thank you for your generous support…your blessing will bless others.

GBU Life Financial District 707 in Grand Rapids, MI, has selected the Michelle Lunn Hope Foundation as their charity of choice for the Month of November 2022. We received a donation in the amount of $500. We are grateful for their generosity and will make sure this donation gets in the right hands.

On November 14, 2022, the Michelle Marie Lunn Hope Foundation donated $36,000 to the Van Andel Institute for blood cancer research. $15,000 went towards the purchase of a -80 degree C freezer. The freezer will store rare samples & antibodies and perhaps coordinate logistics with the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF) for local fresh-vs-frozen plasma comparisons. It could have a global impact if they show that marrow aspirates are neither necessary nor sufficient to predict the outcome of treatment or transplant in AML, ALL, or MM. The highest-risk cases could then be moved to adaptive clinical trials using blood plasma as a dual readout for response and complications, which is one of Dr. Triches’ long-term goals for the standard of care. Instead of a bone marrow aspirate (or biopsy) at the beginning of treatment (Induction) then, again 28 days later, each week blood sample would be used to determine how well the treatment is working…

On 11/23/2021 the Michelle Marie Lunn Hope Foundation (MLHOPE) visited the VanAndel Institute (VAI) and presented a check for $30,000. The funding will go 100% to research on cancer, mainly blood cancer. The VAI has an endowment that provides funding for the overhead to enable this. Researchers Tim Triche, Jr., Ph.D., Translational Biological Informatics, and Hong Wen, Ph.D., Epigenetics and Transcription were with us for lunch and shared the amazing work going on at the institute. We will be having a few of these researchers at Soup Prize so that they can share the work which they are doing. We also decided to create an event focused on sharing what they are up to and interacting (we did this at lunch and it was amazing).This note from Dr.Triche provides insight into the types of topics we talked about.“For example, Nate Buteyn in my lab is presenting his work on FUS-ERG leukemia and their mechanism of…