By Lenny Strauss
Hometown Weekly Reporter
The battle against cancer is made up of stories, from patients, to doctors, their families, and to the countless people who dedicate themselves to finding the cure. Former President of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Dr. Edward Benz once said, “When they write the history of how cancer was conquered, the Pan-Mass Challenge will be in chapter one.” Founded in 1980, the Pan-Mass Challenge (PMC) is an annual bike-a-thon that raises more money for charity than any other single event in the country. Its mission is to raise funds for cancer research and treatment at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Bike riders and their teams tackle routes across Massachusetts that range from 25 to 186 miles. The PMC community represents a worldwide commitment to cancer treatment, research, and ultimately a world without cancer, one mile at a time.
One of the entrants for this upcoming August 2025 ride is Westwood native Dr. Toni Choueiri, MD, Director of the Lank Center for Genitourinary Cancer at Dana-Farber, and a 7-year rider of the PMC, who in 2025 alone has already raised over $50,000, with all proceeds going directly to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Choueiri is more than just a rider, he is at the forefront of the battle against cancer and helms innovative research aimed at a cure. The Hometown Weekly recently had the pleasure of interviewing him, along with his brother-in-law and riding partner, Medfield-based Marc (Mombo) Mombourquette, on this, as well as their upcoming ride.
LS: How did your passion for cancer research begin?
TC: “I was interested in oncology for a long time during medical school, [stemming from] a personal tragedy, a friend/neighbor was diagnosed with testicular cancer when I was a medical student. Unfortunately, it didn’t go well, and it marked me. At the time, targeted therapies were being introduced, with Dana Farber playing a big role. I saw the potential to change this disease and make it chronic or even cure it. I focused on kidney cancer, where survival was a year when I started. Since then, survival of those with stage 4 kidney cancer has risen to five years or more.”
LS: In your own work on cancer therapies, how would you say the development of these treatments have evolved since you began your research, and where do you feel it is heading toward?
TC: “I think its heading in the right direction. Once a drug is approved and tested, we bring the later stage drugs to try and kill cancer cells before they mutate. In addition, we created more treatments for prevention after removal, to prevent its return. That brings me to how much we need to partner with patients, and thus the Pan-Mass Challenge. More drugs, more trials, and more advances are happening.”
LS: Can you tell us more about [your PMC team] Team More Cowbell?
MM: “We started off as a ragtag team of a riders who wanted to team together. The idea is when you ride through the supporting crowds in the PMC, there are cowbells they ring all the time. The original thought was: wouldn’t it be great if we play off the SNL Skit ‘More Cowbell’? That little team has grown quite a bit. We are probably around 30 riders now. It really started to take a bigger role when Toni joined. He has been able to bring a lot more attention to our team, and certainly has helped to grow our fundraising abilities, as well as the work he has done with his patients and their families. The team has grown pretty steadily over the past couple years. The PMC yearbook that recaps previous years rides considers our team a ‘Heavy Hitting Team’ which means that we are one of the leading fundraising teams within the PMC! I think the point is that we took a little ragtag group of friends, and grew it, and now have doctors, nurses, patients and their families on our team, all there for a different reason, but as a result become a tight knit little family. Every year we bring on more people. A lot of us are from this region: Westwood, Medfield, Norfolk, and others along the South Shore.”
LS: Thank you both so much for your continued commitment to the Pan-Mass Challenge. It is amazing that you’ve raised over $50,000 thus far!
TC: “I think it’s great. The PMC is a wonderful family that gives us the funding that allows us to ask the tough questions to give us the preliminary results that allow us to ask even bigger questions. To me, preliminary data is necessary to fulfill an objective to write grants. Very high-risk projects have very high rewards. One example was a study we published in a top scientific journal, around a specific vaccine: a neoantigen personalized vaccine, where you take a patients tumor, specifically kidney cancer patients with a high risk of return, sequence the tumor, compare it to normal cells, and predict through an algorithm, which mutations in the DNA are most likely to produce a positive immune response that target only the patients cancer cells that remain in the body, that normally cannot be tested for or scanned through current traditional methods. This vaccine, when used to treat nine patients, led to none having any experience of cancer recurrence over three years. We are now taking this vaccine to the next steps of testing. Studies and projects such as these are largely covered by philanthropic donations through events like the PMC along with grants.”
LS: What is the longest route you’ve cycled? What is your planned route for this year?
MM: “The PMC has got various routes. The ones Toni and I ride starts from Babson College and goes to Mass Maritime on the first day, around 80 or so miles. The second day we go from Mass Maritime to Provincetown. From there the two of us take a ferry back to Boston harbor with the rest of the riders. Our training route around here, while we have gone soft in the last couple of years, is local! The nice part of living around Medfield and Westwood is that there are lots of hills to train on. I’ll ride to Norfolk up and down hills to really break myself in training, and many along the south shore will join us through these and other areas like Hull and Scituate. The South Shore is an amazing place to train. Our route in the PMC is over 150 miles in two days. Toni and I will start training pretty soon, as soon as the snow clears, we’ll be back out on the roads training, and keep riding right up until the day we take off in the first weekend of August.”
LS: How can residents donate to a PMC rider? Can anyone sign up/register to ride? Are there other ways to get involved?
MM: “If you go to PMC.org all that information will be available for signup. To donate directly to us, you can search for us by our names, or by searching for Team More Cowbell, and we can take donations from there. Sometimes I think back about what it means to ride in the PMC and why people support. For me, I know this is something I want to do every single year, to support the people who are grateful for our involvement and have such a big impact on us as riders and reinforce the value of why we do this.”
TC: “Same for me, when my patients ask me if I’m riding this year, I ask them to join along. I use social media platforms and have brought in recurrent riders and many who want to make a difference. It’s a win, win, win, scenario. Cycling is great exercise, I get to see my patients all along my ride, from Wellesley to Province Town, and it is great to get my own close family, and now children involved. It’s become a tradition!”
Readers! Registration for the 2025 PMC has just opened, and your support for the PMC is critical. Whether as a rider, volunteer or donor, over 270,000 supporters contribute to the PMC’s gift annually making up 66% of the Jimmy Fund’s annual revenue. 100% of every rider-raised dollar goes directly to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Look out for Dr Choueiri, Mombo, and many other passionate riders during PMC weekend on August 2nd and 3rd, 2025. To register for the PMC, please click here: https://secure.pmc.org/Ride
