To honor the Childhood Cancer Awareness Month of September, Salt Lake City – based Kneaders Baker and Café is partnering with the Huntsman Caner Institute of the University of Utah to raise money towards research.

The 16 bakeries in Arizona will be offering elephant shaped sugar cookies through the end of the month, with all of the proceeds going towards research done by Dr. Joshua Schiffman on elephant DNA. You can find your closest bakery by going to www.kneaders.com and looking up locations.

With Childhood cancer estimated to impact 10,380 children in the United States this year alone per the National Cancer Institute, but only 4% of research goes to children’s cancer annually according to the I Care I Cure – Childhood Cancer Foundation finding more funding is necessary. Any and all support towards research will continue to allow researcher’s like Dr. Schiffman’s to continue working towards finding a cure.  

Dr. Schiffman’s research is groundbreaking and may be the key to unlocking a cure for childhood cancer. The research with elephants is looking in to why elephants who have 100 times as many cells as human do, do not get cancer at a rate of 100 times more than humans. Elephants have 38 copies of a gene that is a known tumor suppressor compared to the 2 genes humans have.  It is also a possibility that elephants have the ability to kill off cells that could become cancerous more so than humans.

If you are interested in other ways to donate to this research you are in luck! When you purchase a cookie from Kneaders Bakery you will be invited to round up your total purchase to the nearest dollar or adding a specific dollar mount to your purchase as well. And if sugar cookies aren’t your thing, you can also donate by going to www.kneaders.com/fightcancer and donating directly on their page.