The Bili Project Foundation was founded by Sue Acquisto, the wife of Vince Acquisto, and his business partner Joy Stephenson after Vince was diagnosed and later passed from bile duct cancer. Bile duct cancer and other biliary system cancers are among the most difficult to detect. If screening or testing for risk factors or silent symptoms of this type of cancer was available for Vince, perhaps he
would have had a chance for successful treatment at an early stage. Inspired by Vince’s passion for education, Sue and Joy partnered with the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) medical research team and other institutions to assess how better to stop this quick and silent killer. The Foundation has made significant headway in terms of establishing the UCSF Hepatobiliary Tissue Bank (HBTB), forging partnerships with world-renowned institutions to expand our work, conducting innovative research, and leveraging contributions toward efforts that have helped the tumor bank grow.
