John Crawford joins Clearity Board
La Jolla, Calif. December 2, 2009 The Clearity Foundation today announced that Mr. John Crawford, MBA had joined its Board of Directors and was appointed Chief Financial Officer. Over the past 28 years, Mr. Crawford has been an executive officer and director for more than a dozen life sciences firms with five of them in cancer drug development. Most recently, he was CFO of Phenomix Corp and three other San Diego-based biotechnology firms. Mr. Crawford holds a B.S. in mathematical sciences from Stanford University and an M.B.A. in Finance from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. “We are delighted that John is joining The Clearity Foundation as a director and officer. He brings both the enthusiasm for personalizing cancer treatment for ovarian cancer patients as well as the discipline of sound financial practice,” said founder Dr. Laura Shawver. “The Clearity Foundation is a growing organization and we are excited to expand both our capabilities and our reach.”
“Personalized medicine is a buzzword that we hear often is proving difficult to bring it to the bedside of cancer patients. Providing tumor blueprints to ovarian cancer patients will help point patients in the direction of the right treatment rather than the trial-and-error approach that is utilized today,” said John Crawford. “I like the commitment that Clearity has to make every dollar raised from the public go to helping patients.”
Ovarian cancer is a complex, heterogeneous disease where most all women receive standard carboplatin/paclitaxel treatment, regardless of the histology or the molecular biology of their tumors. Ovarian cancer kills more than 15,000 women every year out of the approximately 21,000 diagnosed. When a patient’s ovarian cancer returns after standard chemotherapy, a chance for a cure is less than15%, or less than 3% if she did not respond to initial treatment. The mission of The Clearity Foundation is to improve treatment options for ovarian cancer patients and change the one-size-fits-all approach in order to improve survival. The Clearity Foundation is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.
