In Oceanside, Mount Sinai South Nassau scores $1M donation

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Oceanside-based Mount Sinai South Nassau received a $1 million donation from the Betty Ajces Trust to help the hospital expand access to cancer clinical trials and research on Long Island.

Last August, the trust donated $200,000 to the hospital to establish the Leon and Betty Ajces Memorial Fund at the hospital and to benefit its cancer research and prevention efforts.

“This generous gift will help us give patients with a cancer diagnosis the opportunity to enroll in clinical trials for the latest innovations in cancer therapies, technologies, and treatment protocols,” Dr. Adhi Sharma, president of Mount Sinai South Nassau, said in a news release about the donation.

“Instead of having to travel to New York City, this gift will allow us to enroll patients in cutting-edge trials right here on Long Island,” Sharma added.

“Mount Sinai South Nassau has demonstrated that it is committed to advancing research and access to the latest cancer treatments,” Alan Weiner, a trustee of the Betty Ajces Trust and a longtime friend of the Ajces, said in the news release. “As per the mission of the Ajces Trust, we are pleased to support the hospital’s expansion of cancer research and treatment on Long Island.”

Based at the hospital’s Gertrude & Louis Feil Cancer Center in Valley Stream, the hospital’s Department of Clinical Research is staffed by a clinical research manager, nurse and coordinator. The hospital staff works in coordination with its counterparts at The Tisch Cancer Institute, a National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center that is part of the Mount Sinai Health System in Manhattan.

A Protocol Review Committee ensures all protocols and clinical studies align with the National Cancer Institute Central Institutional Review Board, and the hospital’s mission. They are then forwarded to the Institutional Review Board, which provides regulatory review, approval and monitoring of clinical trials conducted at the hospital to ensure the protection of patients participating in the trials.

Mount Sinai South Nassau currently has patients enrolled in breast and lung cancer clinical trials.

“Many of our patients on Long Island want access to clinical trials but they do not necessarily want to travel to New York City given the time and expense involved,” Dr. Rajiv Datta, chair of the Department of Surgery at Mount Sinai South Nassau and director of the Feil Cancer Center, said in the news release “Every trial and every patient enrolled requires proper support. This gift will allow us to provide that support and help kickstart further expansion of access.”

“We have been working with our colleagues at Mount Sinai South Nassau to develop our clinical trial footprint on Long Island by expanding access to cancer clinical trials and research,” Dr. Karyn Goodman, associate director of clinical research at The Tisch Cancer Institute, said in the news release. “This gift helps us improve access to cutting-edge treatment and clinical trails, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. It will have a real and positive impact on our patients.”

Betty Ajces, born in Jackson Heights, Queens, in 1929, was the daughter of Louis Green, who played clarinet with the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Principal Conductor Arturo Toscanini. After graduating from high school in 1947, Ajces toured with an “all-girl” jazz trio, playing throughout the country in the late 1940s and early 1950s. She continued to perform in community orchestras into her 80s, serving as chair of the board of the Rockaway-Five Towns Orchestra for many years. She was 93 when she died in August 2022 after suffering a stroke.

Her beloved husband of 42 years Leon Ajces died in 1999. The Ukrainian-born immigrant fought in World War II as a Jewish major in the Red Army of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union and defected to the United States in 1948. His story of transformation from a Soviet military intelligence officer to a loyal patriot and enormously successful businessperson is chronicled in the 2003 book “Songa’s Story: How a Shtetl Jew Found the American Dream,” by Natalie Green Giles, Betty and Leon Ajces’ niece.