PORTSMOUTH — Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity at Shawnee State University is kicking off a fundraiser for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. It is working with St. Jude in a “Care for Cures” fundraiser.

The TKEs will be at the University Center at a donation table every Monday and Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. until April 16.

“We thought it would be a good cause to help children,” said Ryan Collins, president of the TKEs. “We hope to raise $2,000 to help in the St. Jude research.”

At the end of the fundraiser, the fraternity will be having a video game tournament at 6 p.m. on Friday, April 16, in the Flohr Lecture Hall at Clark Memorial Library with Guitar Hero, Call of Duty and Madden 10. It is a $3 buy-in for each tournament.

The 15 TKE members will also shave their heads when they reach the $2,000 goal to show their support.

Founded in 1962 by the late entertainer Danny Thomas who was also a TKE member, St. Jude freely shares its discoveries with scientific and medical communities around the world, publishing more research articles than any other pediatric cancer research center in the United States.

St. Jude treats more than 5,400 patients each year and it is the only pediatric cancer research center where families never pay for treatment not covered by insurance.

St. Jude is financially supported by thousands of individual donors, organizations and corporations.

It is home to one of the world’s largest and most complete repositories of biological information about childhood cancer. The collection dates to the 1970s and includes more than 50,000 tumor, bone marrow, blood and other biological samples. These samples are essential to efforts to understand the origins of cancer.

The tissue bank has also helped St. Jude scientists develop the experimental models expected to be important for determining which mutations drive cancer’s development and spread.

While great progress has been made in treating childhood cancer, it is still the leading cause of death from disease among U.S. children over 1 year of age, and cure rates for some childhood cancers remain below 50 percent.

For more information, call Collins at (937) 205-9547 or send donations to Tau Kappa Epsilon, 1412 Second Street, Portsmouth, OH 45662.