On March 18, 2015 Lymphoma Program Director, Dr. John Leonard presented a brief program with the LLS entitled, “Clinical Trials or Standard Treatment? Understanding Options for Blood Cancer“. The program covered:
The role of clinical trials in blood cancer treatment
How clinical trials are designed.
How to determine the best treatment options for patients
Talking to your healthcare team about treatment options
In two weeks the 2015 meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) will take place in Chicago, bringing oncology professionals together from around the world. Below are the abstracts Lymphoma Program team members were involved in whole or in part to be presented at ASCO 2015:
Palbociclib is a selective CDK4/6 inhibitor approved by the FDA for the treatment of patients with breast cancer. Currently it’s being tested in phase I trials for the treatment of patients with mantle cell lymphoma. The use of palbociclib as a cancer treatment was championed by Selina Chen-Kiang, PhD., professor of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine and Microbiology & Immunology, and a key collaborator with the Lymphoma Program. Palbociclib is currently considered one of the next big things in cancer treatment. But:
“..it’s old news for Selina Chen-Kiang, Ph.D…who has been a cheerleader for palbociclib for the past decade. In fact, her relentless effort helped resurrect the drug after it was shelved by an uninterested pharmaceutical company, and her initial findings inspired the clinical trials that paved the path for its accelerated approval.”
“Chen-Kiang is renowned for her research in immunology and hematological malignancies. A molecular biologist by training, she first got swept into myeloma and lymphoma research while studying how antibody-secreting plasma cells were generated from B cells. Unlike solid tissue, normal immune cells can be isolated at different stages from mice and humans, making them the perfect model to study her primary passion: cell cycle control of immunity.”
Today Dr. Chen-Kiang’s dogged inquiry into the potential of palbociclib has the potential to help cancer patients. Her resolve exemplifies the bench portion of our bench to bedside approach at the Meyer Cancer Center. Palbociclib is currently undergoing phase I investigator-initiated trials, sponsored by the Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program at the National Cancer Institute at Weill Cornell Medical College. The principle investigator is Dr. Peter Martin. You can listen to him explain explain the benefits of this recently initiated trial:
New Developments in Lymphoma 