Family and friends will remember Karl Potach Monday by raising money to combat the cancer that claimed his life.

The 14th annual Karl Potach Memorial Golf Tournament will be held Monday at the Austin County Club. Proceeds will go to research Wilms’ tumor, which took 4-year-old Karl’s life in 1997.

Family friend Lance Pogones started the annual golf tournament in 1998 to raise funds to support cancer research and honor Karl Potach.

Registration begins at 10 a.m. with a shotgun start at 12:45 p.m.

In 2010, the Karl R. Potach Foundation donated $50,000 to the Hormel Institute for researching the Wilms’ tumor.

Scientists at the Institute say they’ve made steps in the fight against Wilms’ tumor, the fifth most common pediatric malignancy.

“Since we’ve begun our research on this cancer, we have made real progress in understanding Wilms’ tumor,” said Dr. Zigang Dong, executive director of the Institute, in a news release.

Since 2008, The Hormel Institute, University of Minnesota-Mayo Clinic, has partnered with the Karl R. Potach Foundation for a research project exclusively focused on Wilms’ tumor.

Wilms’ tumor occurs in about 1 per 100,000 people and is a childhood embryonic tumor of the kidney.

Research at the Institute is focused on determining the role of the Wilms’ tumor 1 gene, or WT1, as a cancer-causing gene in cancer development.

WT1 is present in many tumors and acts as a cancer-causing gene in multiple forms of cancer.

Dr. Kun Yeong Lee and Dr. Young Jin Jeon are the primary scientists studying Wilms’ tumor at the Institute in the Cellular and Molecular Biology research section led by Dr. Zigang Dong, executive director, and Dr. Ann M. Bode, associate director.

To register or make a donation to Monday’s Karl Potach Memorial Golf Tournament, go to www.karlpotachfoundation.com. Registration starts Monday at 10 a.m.