The Eleni Giannakopoulos Research Fund

Eleni was just 12 years old when she was diagnosed with rhabdomyosarcoma.

Over the next three years, she endured more than most people endure in a lifetime. From the very beginning, world-renowned experts told us she would not make it. We fought harder to prove them wrong. She was treated with chemotherapy regimens developed in the 1970s: brutal, punishing drugs that have barely changed in fifty years. Early on, we were told a trial wasn’t necessary, that there was nothing promising, nothing in Phase 3. Later, when we were desperate, she wasn’t approved for one.

She took what existed. It took a devastating toll.

Despite everything, Eleni was a ray of sunshine.

She had a light in her, and everyone who knew her felt it. She was a dancer, a golfer, a musician. She loved the ocean. She loved to travel. She asked how you were doing on days when no one would have blamed her for asking nothing at all. She refused to let her illness become her identity. She kept it separate from school, from her friendships, from the ordinary life she loved and fought to hold onto. She wanted to be known for who she was, not for what she was fighting.

She was a triplet, alongside her sister Georgia and her brother Niko. The three of them shared a beginning, and they share her still.

In March 2026, Eleni passed away at just 15 years old. But her light did not go out. It lives in her sister and her brother. It lives in every person she made braver. It lives in her family, and it lives in the work still to be done.

That work is a cure, and it is also living fully, and with love, the way she did.

No child should be treated with drugs older than her parents. No family should be told there is no trial, no next option, nothing left to try. Eleni deserved better. Every child with rhabdomyosarcoma deserves better. Until research delivers it, families will keep hearing the same words we heard, and children will keep suffering the way she suffered.

We honor Eleni’s light, as we do every day, in everything we carry forward in her name. And we keep pushing for the research that will mean fewer families ever have to hear those words.

She is forever loved and deeply missed. ♥️

Eleni’s light lives within us, forever. ✨