The Pap Corps, Champions for Cancer Research

The Pap Corps, Champions for Cancer Research This unusually vast and vigorous volunteer organization has one goal: helping the physicians and scientists at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center vanquish cancer.

In 1952 five women organized a support group for the Dade County Cancer Institute. Today, some 60 years later, this group has grown to become the largest all-volunteer organization in the nation for raising funds to fight cancers of all types.

The Pap Corps, Champions for Cancer Research now boasts some 21,000 members—men and women—organized into 55 chapters across Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade counties. The Pap Corps’ annual gift to the University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center provides critical seed money that scientists and researchers need to apply for grants from the National Cancer Institute, American Cancer Society, and other funding organizations. The Pap Corps' magnificent generosity in recent years has totaled $25 million to Momentum2.

The Pap Corps is named for George Papanicolaou, the inventor of the pap smear—a diagnostic tool used to detect cervical cancer. Papanicolaou was the former director of the then-Dade County Cancer Institute, which merged with UM’s original Comprehensive Cancer Center in 1984.

When the new Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center opened in 1992, the Papanicolaou research laboratories were relocated to UM’s medical campus. In addition to raising millions, The Pap Corps has helped turn Sylvester into a magnet for some of the world’s top researchers and physicians dedicated to treating and eradicating cancer.

Member of Millennium Giving Society

Cancer Research
Eckhard Podack leads immunology research at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, South Florida's leading center of cancer research, diagnosis, and treatment, which receives extensive philanthropic support from the Pap Corps.