Where The Bili Project Foundation All Began
The Bili Project Foundation was founded by Sue Acquisto, the wife of Vince Acquisto, and his business partner Joy Stephenson after Vince was diagnosed and later passed from bile duct cancer. Bile duct cancer and other biliary system cancers are among the most difficult to detect. If screening or testing for risk factors or silent symptoms of this type of cancer was available for Vince, perhaps he would have had a chance for successful treatment at an early stage. Inspired by Vince’s passion for education, Sue and Joy partnered with the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) medical research team and other institutions to assess how better to stop this quick and silent killer.
As a result of this partnership, began California’s first Hepatobiliary Tissue Tumor Bank where UCSF and other collaborating institutions now have access to banked tumor samples in order to advance the research of these diseases. UCSF’s Hepatobiliary Tissue Tumor Bank is now thriving and houses over a hundred tumor samples, all which have the potential to lead to groundbreaking research in early detection, treatments and cures of these diseases.
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