Carrying on Gabriella Miller’s war on pediatric cancer

Almost a year and a half after 10-year-old childhood-cancer research advocate Gabriella Miller of Leesburg died of an inoperable brain tumor, hundreds of her friends, fans and supporters gathered Saturday at the Ritz Carlton in Tysons Corner to help honor her final request: finding a cure for pediatric cancer.

Saturday’s second annual Smashing Walnuts Foundation “Cracking the Cure” Gala, a fundraiser hosted by the cancer research foundation that Gabriella created with her family, drew more than 450 — including political officials, cancer researchers, Washington Redskins players and family members of children fighting cancer.

“It surpassed our goals and expectations,” Ellyn Miller, Gabriella’s mother and executive director of the Smashing Walnuts Foundation, said of the event. The gala raised more than $200,000, she said.

“We’re very thankful to everybody who came out and who wants to do the same thing that we want to do, to find funding for childhood cancer, and especially childhood brain cancer,” she said.

During Gabriella’s 11-month battle with a brain tumor, she became a widely celebrated cancer awareness and research advocate and a passionate public speaker, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Make-A-Wish nonprofit organization and helping her family to launch her foundation. Weeks before she died in October 2013, she urged her loved ones and lawmakers to continue her efforts after she was gone.

“If I lose my battle, then I want other people to carry on with the war,” the fifth-grader said during an interview with documentary filmmakers. “They’re going to win this war.”

In September, the Smashing Walnuts Foundation awarded its first grant, for $100,000, to pediatric cancer researcher Javad Nazarian at Children’s National Health System. Nazarian’s team focuses on the study of diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma — the particularly aggressive and terminal type of brain tumor that was discovered on Gabriella’s brain stem less than a year before she died. After Gabriella’s death, her family donated her tumor to Nazarian to support his research, helping his team to better understand how the cancer grows, he said at the gala.

“We are getting a clearer picture of how the tumor invades the brain, and how it evolves. This is particularly important if we are to fight the cancer,” Nazarian said in prepared remarks for the gala. “We are trying to understand how the tumor cells work, what makes them grow and what makes them invade an otherwise healthy brain. Only then we can develop therapeutics and offer treatments for our children suffering from brain cancers, and give their parents hope.”

The gala also honored Virginia Democratic Sens. Timothy M. Kaine and Mark Warner, who were among the supporters of a federal pediatric medical research bill named in Gabriella’s honor. The Gabriella Miller Kids First Research Act was passed by Congress in 2013 with bipartisan support and was signed into law by President Obama in April 2014.

“I’m reminded of a beautiful phrase of a former Virginia governor, Doug Wilder, who used to always say, “When the thing is right, the time is right,’” Kaine said in his remarks at the gala. “And that is the case about Smashing Walnuts. That is the case about Gabriella’s mission. That is the case about this particular bill and the need to more significantly fund childhood research.”

Although the legislation intends to send more than $127 million over 10 years to the National Institutes of Health, the funding appropriation must be made by Congress annually, Kaine noted.

“Getting the bill passed was one thing. Getting the appropriations done —that was even harder,” Kaine said. “And we’ve got to do it every year. . . . So the challenge never ends; the battle never ends; the fight never ends.”

The theme of Saturday’s gala was “An Evening in Paris” — an homage to a trip to Paris that Gabriella and her family took through the Make-A-Wish Foundation. It marked another milestone for the family and the Smashing Walnuts Foundation, Ellyn Miller said.

But she is already thinking about what comes next, she said, whether it’s next year’s gala, meetings with lawmakers on Capitol Hill, new research or the promise she made to her daughter.

“I can’t imagine not doing this now, ever,” Miller said. “We need to see better results . . . we need to do better for our children.”

The Smashing Walnuts Foundation will continue to raise funds for research grants but will also aim to establish an endowment that would continue to fund pediatric cancer research for decades to come, she said.

“The research that Dr. Nazarian has done with Gabriella’s tumor has actually garnered international attention. Gabriella would be so incredibly proud to know that she is helping to find a cure to the very cancer that killed her,” Miller said. “It’s the light you want to see at the end of that long tunnel. It might be far off, but we have to keep that little light going.”

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