Stand Up To Cancer is an initiative created to accelerate groundbreaking cancer research that will get new therapies to patients quickly and save lives. SU2C’s goal is to bring together the best and the brightest in the cancer community, encouraging collaboration instead of competition. By galvanizing the entertainment industry, SU2C creates awareness and builds broad public support for this effort.
About Meryl’s involvement

On September 05, 2008, an array of celebrities, including Meryl Streep, Jennifer Aniston, Scarlett Johansson, Charlize Theron, David Cook, Christina Applegate and Sally Field appeared on the Stand Up to Cancer telethon, which wase simultaneously aired on ABC, CBS and NBC to raise money for cancer research and treatment.

Cancer could strike any of us at any moment. People of all colors, ages and income levels. Seventy years ago, it seemed to Americans that polio could strike anyone, from a newborn baby to the President of the United States. In 1938, an entertainer named Eddie Cantor got on the radio and asked every citizen to send ten cents to a new charity, devoted to cureing polio. So began the “March of Dimes”. Nobody knows who’s dime put the effort over the top and made the backscenes that stopped Polio possible. But somebody did. We often tell ourselves that the problems we face with cancer are too great. That one person alone can’t make a difference. But we can. We don’t know who’ll donate the crucial dollar that finally makes it possible to end cancer. Maybe, it’s you.