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FEATURED
ARTICLE
Promising Trends in
Myeloma Treatments
Myeloma
impacts a disproportionate number of African
Americans.
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FUNDRAISING
UPDATES
New Half Marathon for
Women
LLS and Women's
Running magazine have joined forces to
create The Women's Half Marathon To Benefit The
Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, in St.
Petersburg FL.
READ
MORE
Two New Promotions
Help LLS's Mission
LLS announces its own
personalized VISA credit card and a great
money-saving offer from Gap Inc.
READ
MORE
Sign up for LLS's 2009 School & Youth
Programs
It's not too late get
involved in one of LLS's most exciting
programs. READ
MORE | |
PATIENT
SERVICES
LLS Launches My Clinical Trials
Journey READ
MORE
Revised Each New Day/Ideas
for Coping with Blood Cancers Booklet
Available READ MORE
RESEARCH
This Month,
eNewsline
Introduces the Work of Alice Fan,
M.D.
READ
MORE
Scientists Seek
Ways to
Decrease Treatment-Related Heart
Damage
READ
MORE
ADVOCACY
State Advocacy
Campaigns Gear Up for
Action
READ
MORE
FROM THE
LLS BLOG READ
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 Promising Trends in
Myeloma Treatments
Black
History Month is a great time to celebrate the
contributions of African Americans. It's also an
opportunity to remind people that the blood
cancer myeloma impacts a disproportionate number
of black Americans.
In fact, blacks
have more than double the incidence than whites,
and no one knows why.
Myeloma, a cancer
of new plasma cells, remains the most
intractable blood cancer to cure, with just a
35-percent relative, five-year survival rate in
the United States (compared with, say, 95.1
percent for children with Hodgkin
lymphoma). Yet doctors are making
significant progress in treating and, in some
cases, managing the illness, using a combination
of proven therapies and novel
treatments.
"The good news is that we are
learning more and more about (myeloma)," said
Robert Z. Orlowski, M.D., Ph.D., a noted blood
cancer expert. "Our treatments are becoming more
effective. That is already resulting in an
improvement in overall survival as well as
quality of life. I think the next five to 10
years will only see the pace of that improvement
accelerating."
Doctors are developing an
ever-growing arsenal of treatments to battle
myeloma and its complications. Emerging drugs
like thalidomide, bortezomib and lenalidomide
are giving patients greater hope, even if their
disease relapses.
If you or a loved one
has been impacted by myeloma, LLS is here to
help with information and support. Call the
Information Resource Center (IRC), which is
staffed my master's level social workers and
health educators, at (800) 955-4572. In
addition, LLS's Web site,www.LLS.org, is an excellent
source of free information about myeloma,
treatments and other disease-related
information.
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New Half Marathon for
Women
LLS and Women's
Running magazine have joined forces to
create The Women's Half Marathon To Benefit The
Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, in St.
Petersburg FL. This brand-new event will take
place on the weekend of Nov. 21-22, in St.
Petersburg, FL.
It's that
city's first women-only half marathon, and
it is expected to draw athletes from around the
country. Participants can train to run or walk
the half marathon through LLS's Team In Training
(TNT), the world's first, largest and best
charity sports training program. With TNT,
participants join a group of supportive
teammates and get four to five months of
training with certified coaches. In return, they
raise funds to support blood cancer research and
patient services.
"LLS wants to thank
the officials of St. Petersburg for granting us
the opportunity to put on this great event,"
says Nancy Klein, LLS's chief marketing and
revenue officer. "This will be an exciting
weekend, giving participants the chance to take
on an athletic challenge while also making a
difference in the lives of thousands of people
fighting blood cancer."
The 13.1-mile
flat, fast race course will wind along the
scenic downtown St. Petersburg waterfront,
through quaint communities, past historic
buildings and museums.
For more
information about TNT, including the upcoming
summer season, please visit www.teamintraining.org
or contact
your local LLS chapter
.
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Two New Promotions
Help LLS's Mission
Personalized VISA Credit
Card
LLS is thrilled to
announce its own branded VISA credit card.
LLS will receive $50 the first time you use your
card and will also receive proceeds from
additional purchases.
Two standard options are
available - a red design with the LLS logo in
white; or a purple design with the TNT
logo. Either card can be personalized to
include a picture of your choice as the
background. You can have your family, pet or any
other image you'd like on the card.
The
new VISA card is offered through UMB Financial
Corp., with a 0-percent, six-month introductory
rate.
This is a terrific opportunity to
support LLS every time you shop. Click
here for more
information.
Gap Inc.'s Give
& Get Program
As an added bonus, LLS
is delighted to announce that Gap Inc.
has
named LLS one of only six charities
to receive donations from its spring Give &
Get program, running March
12-15.
Give & Get
provides consumers with a
downloadable 30-percent
discountcoupon, good
at any Gap Inc. store -
incl uding Gap, Old Navy and
Banana Republic. LLS will
receive 5 percent of the net sales on any
purchases made with the
LLS-coded Give & Get coupon
(valid only
in-store).
Click
here to get your coupon, and share this
link with friends and
family.
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A
Desire to Give Back
It's not too
late to sign up for LLS's 2009 School &
Youth Programs, which includes the Pennies
campaigns.
The campaign officially got
underway this month, but there's plenty of
opportunity for schools and kids to get
involved, says Kristy Lysik, national director,
School & Youth Programs.
"We're
always welcoming new participants," she says,
adding that the program runs through
March.
Pennies - Pennies for
Patients® and
Olive Garden's Pasta for Pennies - encourages
students from elementary grades through high
school to collect spare change for LLS's
research programs and patient services. Last
year, more than 10 million students raised
over $19 million for
LLS's mission.
Classrooms can win
great prizes, while teaching the value of
helping others.
For more information or
to sign up right away, please visit www.schoolandyouth.org
or
contact
your local LLS chapter.
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| | |
 LLS launches My Clinical Trials
Journey
LLS
recently launched My
Clinical Trials Journey,
a free
personalized and interactive program that
follows the stories and experiences of three
cancer survivors who have participated in
clinical trials: Steve, a CML
survivor; Kim, a lymphoma survivor; and
Roger, a multiple myeloma survivor.
Their
stories of hope and determination are
compelling. Ann Pirro, a physician's assistant,
provides expert insights along the way. My Clinical Trials
Journey is the third in a series of
unique, LLS-sponsored interactive features. The
other two are:
My Personal CML
Journey and
My Personal Lymphoma
Journey.
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top
 Revised Each New Day
Brochure
LLS is pleased to offer a
newly revised Each New Day/Ideas
for Coping with Blood Cancers booklet
(PS67).
Each New Day
provides current information, coping strategies
and tools in an easy-to-read format. It includes
sections on talking about cancer with children,
other family members, friends and employers;
managing treatment decisions and communicating
with providers; coping with feelings; getting
support; guidance for family and friends; and
the different ways LLS can help.
Inspiring messages from volunteer
patient-reviewers appear throughout the booklet.
As a special
feature, Each
New Day comes with inserts featuring
important questions for patients to ask the
healthcare providers.
To order a free
copy or read online, please visit our
Free
Materials
section
at LLS.org.
Upcoming Telephone Education
Program
What:
Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS):
Exploring Current and Emerging
Therapies
When:
Thursday, March 26, 12 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.
ET
Guest Speaker: Alan List,
M.D., executive vice president,
physician-in-chief, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center
& Research
Institute.
For
more information, contact the IRC at (800)
955-4572 or regularly check the calendar section
at www.LLS.org.
Also,
a short, easy-to-read summary of
the recent program Milestones in Myeloma
Therapy: An Update from the American Society of
Hematology (ASH) Annual Meeting, featuring
Dr. Orlowski, has been added to the LLS Web
site.
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Alice Fan,
M.D., instructor of medicine, Division of
Oncology, Stanford University School of
Medicine, is doing fascinating
work in lymphoma research. She is a recipient of
an LLS Clinical
Development Program: Special Fellow in Clinical
Research grant.
Dr. Fan,
what's the biomedical problem you're
trying to solve?
Some lymphomas are
still very difficult to cure. For these
lymphomas, we need new treatments that are safe
and effective, and also better ways to predict
if treatments will work. My LLS-funded
project is addressing both of these issues.
I am testing a new possible treatment,
atorvastatin, a cholesterol-lowering drug. As
part of the research team in the lab of Dean
Felsher, M.D., Ph.D., we published that
atorvastatin can decrease activity of cancer
proteins and stop the growth of lymphoma cells
in mice.
Now, I am translating the
preclinical results into a clinical trial in
patients with lymphoma. To address whether we
can predict if the treatment will work, as part
of the project I am also developing a new way to
measure the activity of cancer proteins in small
numbers of cells from individual patients.
What's
novel or innovative about your approach?
We are developing the use of a novel
nano-fluidic technology to measure the activity
of cancer proteins in as few as 100 tumor cells.
Just a minimally invasive sampling procedure,
such as a fine needle aspiration or a blood
draw, before and during therapy, can provide us
with adequate numbers of a patient's tumor cells
to measure changes in many cancer proteins. The
novel technology is incredibly exciting because
it enables us to study these biologic protein
measures that could not be feasibly studied
before. To try to do these tests with standard
methods, each patient would have undergone
several invasive surgical biopsies to get enough
cells.
In our atorvastatin study,
we collect a small, minimally invasive sample of
patient lymphoma cells before and during
atorvastatin treatment to learn each
individual's biological response to the drug.
For example, we determine if cancer proteins are
being turned off in the tumor cells and if
individual tumor cells stop growing.
Then, we integrate all this information for a
more complete picture of how the drug works.
How will
your work one day help patients?
The
long-term goal is to individualize cancer
treatment by taking a sample of a patient's
tumor cells, characterizing the sample's tumor
protein profile and using the profile to target
the patient's cancer proteins.
As an
example, atorvastatin may be a new drug that
turns off specific tumor cancer proteins. Using
our new methods for measuring proteins, we are
coming closer to our goal. The nano-fluidic
technology we are developing for use in lymphoma
can eventually be more broadly applied to all
types of cancers.
Are you close to
clinical trials?
We have an open
clinical trial at Stanford studying atorvastatin
in patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Based on
positive results from our first group of
patients, we have now expanded new slots for
patients with small lymphocytic lymphoma,
chronic lymphocytic leukemia and marginal zone
lymphoma subtypes.
What other projects
are you excited about and believe will benefit
patients?
I am most excited about
projects where basic scientists collaborate with
translational and clinical researchers to
develop new ways to diagnose and treat cancer.
During my training, I learned valuable lessons
about combining the art of medicine and the
science of translational research from my
primary mentor, Dr. Felsher, and other leaders
in lymphoma research, including Saul Rosenberg,
M.D., Beverly Mitchell, M.D., Ron Levy, M.D.,
and Sandra Horning, M.D. When researchers with
diverse fields of expertise communicate, the
ideas are more creative and also more likely to
succeed.
When you're not in the
lab, what are some of your hobbies and
non-research interests?
I am
passionate about helping people in non-medical
ways, too. A few years ago, I co-founded a
program called Lemonaide, whose mission is to
grant gifts to lift the spirits of Stanford
Cancer Center patients and their families during
treatment. It lifts my spirit, too, to see the
smiles that result.
To stay fit and have
fun, a group of fellow researchers meet a few
times a week to run, swim and even aqua-jog. We
have trotted our way through San Francisco, San
Jose and Monterey half marathons.
To
relax and unwind, I turn to classical music.
I've been really lucky to be able to play violin
in orchestras at Carnegie Hall, the Sydney Opera
House and, most recently, the Great Hall of
People in Beijing as a member of the Stanford
Symphony Orchestra. Most of all, I enjoy playing
music with friends.
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top
 Scientists Seek
Ways to
Decrease Treatment-Related Heart
Damage
Thanks to
chemotherapy and other modern treatments, more
and more patients are surviving a diagnosis of
leukemia, lymphoma or myeloma. While effective
against cancer, these same drugs sometimes cause
serious side effects, including damage to the
heart.
Researchers, some of them funded
by LLS, are looking at ways to lower the risk of
chemo-related cardiac problems, also known as
cardiotoxicity.
"We've known for a long
time that certain drugs, especially
anthracyclines, can be cardiotoxic," said Barton
Kamen, M.D., Ph.D., chief LLS medical officer.
"But we're coming up with ways to identify and
combat the problem."
Anthracylines make
up a class of antibiotics that disrupts a cancer
cell's DNA. Anthracyclines include such common
chemotherapy drugs as daunorubicin, doxorubicin,
epirubicin and idarubicin, and are used to treat
all three major blood cancers.
Recently,
physicians have been using the drug dexrazoxane
hydrochloride to help ward off the cardiotoxic
effects of anthracyclines.
In other
research, Smita Bhatia, M.D., M.P.H., of City of
Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, is helping
tackle the problem by examining which patients
may be genetically sensitive to the adverse
effects of certain treatments. Dr. Bhatia is the
recipient of an LLS Translational
Research Program grant to study blood
samples of hundreds of patients.
"If we
can determine who is prone to developing
treatment-related illnesses, then perhaps we can
devise new treatment strategies to decrease the
risk of certain long-term effects," Dr. Bhatia
said. "That may mean giving lower doses of chemo
drugs or providing cardio-protective therapies
during cancer treatment."
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State
Advocacy Campaigns Gear Up  for
Action
While much of the nation has been focused
on Congress and the new president, state
legislatures have also been active. Several states have begun a renewed push
to ensure that blood cancer patients have
increased access to clinical trials.
On
Feb. 2, more than 120 patient advocates from New
York traveled to Albany to support a proposed
program that would help with transportation costs, education
programs and patient navigation related to
clinical trials. The legislation was
sponsored by Assemblyman Richard Gottfried
(D-Manhattan).
The bill passed the New
York State Assembly Committee on Health and now
moves to the Assembly Committee on Ways and
Means. Advocates also urged State Sen. Tom Duane
(D-Manhattan) to sponsor the bill in the New
York State Senate.
State mission days
have been planned for Iowa on March 3 and
Pennsylvania on March 31, with campaigns in full
swing in Florida and Oregon. Like New York,
these campaigns are focusing on clinical trials,
but they are trying to require insurance
companies to provide the routine-care
coverage.
LLS advocates are laying the
groundwork for action by educating
legislators about what clinical trials are, why
they are important to blood cancer patients and
why these types of statutes are needed
in their states.
If you would like to
volunteer or learn about legislative efforts
being conducted in your area, please contact
your local
LLS chapter or visit the
advocacy
section at www.LLS.org.
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Home Office • 1311 Mamaroneck Avenue
• White Plains, NY
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& Lymphoma Society
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Combined Federal Campaign, the National
Coalition for Cancer Research and Blood Cancer
Coalition. This publication is designed to
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matter covered, and is distributed as a public
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with the understanding that LLS is not engaged
in rendering medical or other professional
services.
The Leukemia &
Lymphoma Society is headquartered in White
Plains, NY, with 68 chapters in the United
States and Canada. Its mission: Cure leukemia,
lymphoma, Hodgkin's disease and myeloma, and
improve the quality of life of patients and
their families. Since its founding in 1949, LLS
has invested more than $550 million in research
specifically targeting blood cancers.
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