Two Power House Charity Organizations

The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF) And Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) Partner To Fund $500,000 In Cancer Stem Cell Research Grants

16 Feb 2009


The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF) and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) have partnered to award William Matsui, MD, Johns Hopkins University, and Irving Weissman, MD, Stanford University, research grants totaling $500,000 to study the multiple myeloma cancer stem cell. Each individual grant is valued at $250,000.

These grants, developed in response to input from leading cancer stem cell experts who participated in the 2008 MMRF Myeloma Cancer Stem Cell Research Roundtable, provide an unprecedented opportunity to apply existing knowledge of cancer stem cells to multiple myeloma. Ultimately, the identification and characterization of the multiple myeloma cancer stem cell will advance our understanding of drug resistance and relapse in patients with multiple myeloma and potentially lead to the development of targeted therapies that effectively treat the disease.

"The emerging field of cancer stem cell research holds enormous promise for patients-particularly those with an orphan disease, such as multiple myeloma, for which effective treatments remain limited," said Louise Perkins, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer of the MMRF. "The MMRF is pleased to partner with LLS to advance this important research effort and lay the groundwork for the development of better, more effective treatments."

Many researchers believe that cancer stem cells, although few in number, are responsible for cancer's development, metastases, and recurrence.

"By putting our resources together, LLS and MMRF have identified some of the most promising researchers in the field of stem cell biology as it relates to myeloma," said John Walter, President and Chief Executive Officer of LLS. "Ultimately, the identification and characterization of cancer stem cells in myeloma may enable the development of more effective therapies."


About Multiple Myeloma

Multiple myeloma is an incurable cancer of the plasma cell. The five-year relative survival rate for multiple myeloma is approximately 35%, one of the lowest of all cancers. In 2008, an estimated 19,920 adults (11,190 men and 8,730 women) in the United States were diagnosed with multiple myeloma and an estimated 10,690 people died from the disease.


About the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation

The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF) was established in 1998 as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization by twin sisters Karen Andrews and Kathy Giusti, soon after Kathy's diagnosis with multiple myeloma. The mission of the MMRF is relentlessly pursue innovative means that accelerate the development of next-generation multiple myeloma treatments to extend the lives of patients and lead to a cure. As the world's number-one funder of multiple myeloma research, the MMRF has raised over $110 million since its inception to fund more than 100 laboratories worldwide. The payback on its investment has been significant, including the approval of four new treatments in four years alone. Today, the MMRF is supporting 40 new compounds and approaches now in clinical trials and pre-clinical studies and has facilitated 17 clinical trials through its sister organization, the Multiple Myeloma Research Consortium (MMRC). For more information about the MMRF, please visit http://www.themmrf.org/.


The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society®

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society®, headquartered in White Plains, NY, with 68 chapters in the United States and Canada, is the world's largest voluntary health organization dedicated to funding blood cancer research and providing education and patient services. The LLS 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 $600 million in research specifically targeting leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma. Last year alone, LLS made 6.3 million contacts with patients, caregivers and healthcare professionals. Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation

Article URL:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/139140.php

Me 2009

Well, we made it to 2009, almost two months ago. It is true what they say, time flies when you are having fun! And I suppose the more fun the faster it flies. Maybe you could view this as the low end of Einstein's theory of general relativity.

I am still amazed and thankful at the number of folks who continue to follow this blog. Thank you for hanging in there with me and coming back here from time to time. I'd like to think I have something accurate and interesting to offer from time to time.

It has been a while since I did a health-o-me update so here it comes. Basically, everything remains pretty much the same which is good but could hope my m-spike would go from about .3 gm/dl which is where it has been for about the last three months, to zero. That would be great. I suppose I will have to continue taking this HUGELY expensive drug until I run out of insurance money, the drug stops working, something better comes along, I go into complete remission, or who knows what.

Dave Ramsey. Dave has been around for quite a while but only recently become widely available via TV and XM. I started listening to him on XM recently. I don't agree with everything he says but 98 percent of it is good. Basically, Dave is a finance professor who specializes in personal finance. If you took a finance class, basically you would get someone like Dave spouting financial theory similar to what he "broadcasts out on the radio," to steal a line from O'Brother. Actually, college finance classes are about 100 times more, "steeped in it." At any rate, his advice often makes a lot of sense and he can come up immediately with the most amazing solutions impromptu.

Here is something I came up with listening to Dave and the national news. As I am sure you are aware, we are in this latest economic demise being incessantly referred to as the "financial crisis." I'm sure we need to be reminded numerous times daily or we would simply forget it, and wouldn't that be nice!

If you wanted to see bankers in a real financial crisis, imagine ('cause it ain't ever going to really happen) EVERYONE following Dave's advice and paying off their mortgages and credit cards and becoming debt free. Stop reading for a few seconds and just imagine the ramifications of that. No, don't stop, keep going. Bankers would freak! Imagine them not making three times the price of your house on a 30 year mortgage. Now, that would be a crisis! Almost the same as if someone found a universal, affordable cure to cancer. The medical and insurance industries would be crushed!

Enough about that, back to Dave, Dave promotes savings. Specifically, an emergency fund large enough to pay six or eight months (or more) of expenses in case the paycheck to paycheck syndrome were to come to an abrubpt halt. He said something the other day that made me start thinking, and that is becoming increasingly more difficult with the mind numbing cancer drugs I am taking, another reason to wish for remission. He said this is sort of the same as a company or business maintaining a retained earnings account.

They do seem to be related. However, at least one difference that comes to mind is that corporations don't like to leave any more liquid assets laying around than they have to. Some corporations have a reputation for maintaining large cash reserves and that sometimes qualifies them in the eyes of stock market analysts to be investment worthy.

Generally, corporations like to "invest" liquid assets in internal projects, thus internal rate of return (IRR), and/or external investments, equal to or better than IRR which can compete for internal projects and vice verse, fun stuff huh. One corporation I am very familiar with went as far as to base the decision to retain or divest individual business units on whether they earned at or above the IRR. I think Dave recommends we store up our "retained earnings" in a money market fund or some instrument like that in order to maintain their liquidity and make one, or two, or three percent return (as he likes to point out every now and then).

Now, here is where my thought process takes a sharp left turn out into left field. Consider what is going on with corporate layoffs. Essentially, corporations are ultimately and largely responsible for a reduction in consumer spending via layoffs both directly through unemployment and indirectly through the news media incessantly hawking this stuff to us non-stop on national TV (so don't watch TV, right).

Next, consider this, what about the corporate emergency fund, retained earnings? I began to wonder why corporations don't draw on their emergency fund like Dave suggests we consumers do. Then, it began to dawn on me, why spend your hard earned cash when you can go down and draw unemployment, both them and us! If corporate earnings aren't keeping pace with expenses, there is a federal shock absorber available to them and us, unemployment compensation. I don't think this explains every instance but I think it explains a good many instances of massive layoffs. It's sort of a sideways government bailout.

And that's the way it is February 19, 2009.