Dolphins Cycling Challenge raises $4.65 million for fight against cancer

The Miami Dolphins annually host the Dolphins Cycling Challenge, a two-day bicycle ride throughout South Florida. The goal of the event is to raise as much money as possible for the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami, with 100-percent of the participant fundraising going straight to the fight against cancer. This year, the team held the fifth annual Dolphins Cycling Challenge in February, and announced this weekend that this year's event raised $4.65 million.

Since the first edition of the DCC, over $11 million has been raised.

"Everyone is affected by cancer and the Miami Dolphins are committed to fighting cancer here in South Florida," said Miami Dolphins President & CEO Tom Garfinkel. "The Dolphins Cycling Challenge is supported by many companies and organizations in the tri-county area, including large gifts from Lennar, AutoNation, Related, The Batchelor Foundation and the Mary N. Porter Fund of the Community Foundation of Broward. We are already looking forward to an even bigger and better event the weekend of February 20th, 2016."

DCC funds are used to promote truly innovative programs, by recruiting and retaining the best physicians and scientists and making certain cutting edge treatments and technologies are available to treat cancer patients. In just five years, more than $11.5 million dollars has gone to fund research that leads to more effective targeted therapies for each patient's cancer, including:

• Translational Research - Identifying novel cancer therapies with a special focus on developing precision treatments.
• Clinical Trials - Conducting clinical trials which allow patients to receive some of the most promising new therapies targeting the drivers of their particular cancers.
• Pediatric Oncology - Using groundbreaking discoveries in what drives individual cancers in children to develop cancer treatments offering more options and potentially better outcomes.
• Breast Cancer - Understanding more acutely the heterogeneity of breast cancer to help deliver more personalized therapies.
• Genitourinary Cancer - Identifying the causes of kidney cancer, which will lead to improved, more targeted treatments.
• Radiation Oncology Research - Developing new ways to more precisely deliver radiation therapy in prostate and bladder cancers, concentrating the dosage on cancer cells and leaving healthy tissue unaffected.

"Every day at Sylvester, our teams of cancer specialists and researchers are working together to discover and develop more targeted therapies," said Dr. Stephen Nimer, Director of the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. "With funding from the DCC, we are able to make those life-changing discoveries that lead to more individualized treatments, better outcomes and more hope for patients."

"We are grateful for the amazing effort by the Miami Dolphins staff, players and coaches, along with more than 2,800 participants who rode, ran and walked February 7 & 8, 2015 to tackle cancer," said DCC V Board Chair Richard Berkowitz.

Information for DCC VI will be released this summer.