HEBREW UNIVERSITY
Cancer On Their Mind
At Fundraising Event

HE loss of loved ones was on the minds of some of the 200 guests at an American Friends of Hebrew University dinner at Cipriani 42^nd St. in Manhattan. Executive director Peter Wilner announced that $600,000 had been raised for the university’s Lautenberg Research Center.

Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) visited Israel for the first time in 1968 when he helped establish the center as a new department of immunology at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School.

He was motivated by the searing memory of his father, who succumbed to colon cancer at 43.

The guest of honor, Howard Lutnick, chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald whose offices were wiped out in the 9/11 attack on the World Grade Center, said: "Cancer has been a part of my life since I was a teenager – when I lost my parents." His mother died in her 40s; his father in his 50s.

Michael Kurtz, Lautenberg Center co-chair, said that in 1999 he had an early detection of myeloma.

"I know that the Lautenberg Research Center will help find a way to destroy the cancer cells that are in my body," he said.

His co-chair, Eitan Yefenof, delivered an update on the center’s scientific progress.

Lautenberg said, "I always enjoy listening to Professor Yefenof, though I don’t always get it."