Norton Resident Running Marathon for Dana-Farber

Norton resident Jo-Ann Quirke will run to conquer cancer as a member of the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge team in the 119th Boston Marathon.

Quirke, along with nearly 575 Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge teammates from across the United States and around the world, will run Massachusetts’ historic marathon route from Hopkinton to Boston with a goal to raise $5.2 million for cancer research at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

This year marks the 26th annual running of the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge. One hundred percent of the money raised by the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge team funds Dana-Farber’s Claudia Adams Barr Program in Innovative Basic Cancer Research. The Barr Program supports uniquely promising science research in its earliest stages, providing researchers with critical resources to test their leading-edge ideas. Findings from Barr Program research can provide the results necessary to seek additional federal funding as well as novel clinical insights.

Since its inception in 1990, the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge has raised more than $69 million for the Barr Program. Dana-Farber Trustees J. Wayne and Delores Barr Weaver founded the Barr Program in 1987 to honor Mrs. Weaver’s mother, Claudia Adams Barr, who lost her battle with cancer 30 years earlier.