The HERO program was designed to fund important research initiatives
that will lead to the next breakthroughs in cancer treatments & cures.

RESEARCH OVERVIEW

Since its inception in 1949, the Society has invested more than half a billion dollars in research to find the causes and cures for blood cancers.  Our research budget for fiscal year 2007 was $65 million.

Research grants awarded this year represent an additional $170.6 million committed to research over the next five years:

• Leukemia research: approximately $97 million
• Lymphoma research: approximately $51 million
• Myeloma research: approximately $21 million

OUR ROLE

LLS programs accelerate research outcomes by:

• Filling a void: Supporting promising research projects—for example, those that have high-risk profiles or address serious diseases of lower incidence—which may fail to meet funding criteria of government or for-profit companies.  These projects may result in advances or breakthroughs that happen because of Society funding.
  
• Creating synergy: Facilitating collaboration among Society, government and industry-supported researchers.  This collaboration has led to the application of new treatments to blood cancers and, in some cases, to cancer in general.
  
• Large Scale Funding: Large grants enable scientists from different disciplines and institutions to attack a problem by coming at the disease from several vantage points, leading to faster research successes.

OUR RESEARCHERS MAKING AN IMPACT

For more than 50 years, funding from generous donors has allowed LLS to identify and support promising research. In recent years, scientists affiliated with LLS have helped advance new treatments, including molecularly targeted treatments that can disrupt cancer cell proliferation without harming normal cells.  Scientists working in this area are expanding current knowledge to improve treatments and find applications for more types of blood cancers.


OUR RESEARCH IMPACTING OTHER CANCERS

Research into blood cancers has produced results that can also help other patients. The idea of combination chemotherapy was first developed to treat blood cancers in children, but is now common among cancer treatments. Bone marrow transplants were first used as curative treatments for blood cancer patients, but these successes led the way to stem cell transplants and related immune cell therapies for patients with other diseases. In general, blood cancer cells are easier to access than cells from solid tumors, making it easier to rigorously study cancer-causing molecules in blood cancers and to measure the effects of new therapies that target these molecules. Importantly, many of these molecular abnormalities are frequently also found in other cancers. Several targeted agents, designed to kill only cancer cells and leave healthy cells undamaged, were first developed for blood cancer patients, but are already helping or being developed to help other cancer patients as well.

For example:

1. Gleevec was developed and FDA-approved in 2001 for adults with relapsed/refractory chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), also now approved for patients with newly diagnosed CML (2003), children with CML (2006) and for patients with a stomach cancer called GIST (2002) - it is now used in the treatment of some (so-called Philadelphia chromosome positive) acute lymphoid leukemia (ALL) patients and being tested in other cancers, including advanced breast cancer, and certain forms of nerve and thyroid cancers, among others.

2. Velcade was first approved in 2003 for myeloma patients who did not benefit long-term from other treatments and in 2006 for patients with an aggressive form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma called mantle cell lymphoma. It is now being tested for other lymphoma patients, chronic lymphoid leukemia (CLL), acute leukemia (ALL and AML) and lung and prostate cancer patients.

3. Rituxan was first FDA-approved in 2006 for diffuse large B-cell, CD20-positive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, and soon after for low-grade or follicular B-cell, CD20-positive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. It was also approved in 2006 to be used to treat rheumatoid arthritis. It is also being studied in the treatment of other types of autoimmune diseases and cancers, including other B-cell lymphomas, ALL and CLL, and as a treatment to prevent a serious long-term complication of bone marrow / stem cell transplantation called chronic graft-versus-host disease.

NEW DIRECTIONS

LLS-funded researchers are currently exploring areas of research that hold promise for cures:

• Immunotherapies:  These new treatments include cancer vaccines and immune cell-based procedures that help a patient's own immune cells identify and kill residual blood cancer cells, prolonging remission.
  
• Radioimmunotherapies:  Researchers are developing new techniques that deliver radiation via antibody proteins that bind specifically to cancer cells, sparing normal tissue.
  
• Novel Stem Cell Transplant Procedures: These include so-called mini-transplants that use less toxic pre-transplant treatments and engineered donor cells that help reduce post-transplant complications, making this potentially curative treatment available to more patients.
  
• Survivorship Research: These studies are increasing our understanding of how specific treatments can cause debilitating side-effects, including late-effects, and which patients are at risk for developing these complications, so that these can be predicted, managed, and even prevented.

back to top