• The thymus gland is in the upper part of your chest, between your heart and your lung.
• While the thymus is incredibly useful in immune system development while you are a fetus, it doesn’t do much for you after birth and generally shrinks away by adulthood.
• In thymic cancer, the cells lining the thymus grow out of control and can grow into the heart, the lung and elsewhere.
• Thymic cancer is rare, with only 500 cases being diagnosed a year in the United States.
• While great strides are being made in other areas of cancer research and treatment, thymic-related cancers and malignancies are relatively rare and often ignored by medical researchers. For patients, this means that information is harder to find, treatment protocols are not solidly established, and new drugs and treatments are not to be found.
• The proceeds from the Stinky Ball will be used to raise awareness of thymic cancer and to support research.
• Much more information is available at www.thymic.org.
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