Privacy Policy
Signals Blog

Contributors

Categories

Right Turn: Paying attention to blood cancers

by | Sep 28, 2018

September is National Blood Cancer Awareness Month.

“Few people know that many of today’s fundamental treatments for various cancers, like chemotherapy, began with blood cancer research,” explains Alicia Talarico, President, Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Canada in a news release to draw attention to their 2018 awareness campaign: “Beating Cancer Is In Our Blood.”

According to the news release, the campaign was conceived to bring blood cancers “out of obscurity.” That’s surprising, considering research on blood cancers has led to the development of chemotherapy, the discovery of cancer stem cells by Toronto’s John Dick in the late 1990s and, more recently, immunotherapies.

CAR-T therapies, on everyone’s lips since the U.S. FDA approved Kymriah and Yescarta over a year ago (August and October 2017, respectively), had another big hit of attention in early September when Kymriah became the first CAR-T therapy approved in Canada. Now Novartis, the developer of Kymriah, is working on a system to deliver Kymriah treatments to Canadian patients. May I suggest CCRM as a manufacturing partner?

The most common forms of blood cancer are leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma. They account for 10 percent of new cancer cases diagnosed each year.

In Canada, an estimated 138,100 people are living with, or are in remission from, blood cancers. Blood cancers are the third leading cause of cancer death in Canadian men and the fourth in women.

Stem cell transplants remain a viable treatment option for patients with acute myeloid leukemia. ExCellThera, the spin-off company launched by IRICoR and CCRM, is making exciting progress in testing the safety and efficacy of its best-in-class stem cell expansion process in clinical trials. The success rate of blood system transplantation is strongly correlated to the number of cells used, making ExCellThera’s process to increase the number of stem cells in cord blood a valuable breakthrough for clinical application.

There is nothing amusing about blood cancers, but it’s been proven that laughter is good for our mind and body. So I went searching for a funny lab parody video with some relation to the topic at hand. This one is so bad, it’s good. I hope it makes you smile.

Reference:

http://www.llscanada.org/disease-information/facts-and-statistics

 

The following two tabs change content below.
Avatar photo
My Twitter profileMy Google+ profileMy LinkedIn profile

Stacey Johnson

Stacey Johnson is the editor of Signals and a contributor. For 25 years, Stacey has been providing strategic communications counsel to government, corporate, technology and health organizations. She began her career at the CTV Television Network and then moved to Hill & Knowlton Canada where she advised clients in a variety of industries and sectors. Stacey is the Vice President, Communications and Marketing for CCRM, a leader in developing and commercializing regenerative medicine-based technologies and cell and gene therapies. She has a Master's degree in Public Relations. You can follow her on Twitter @msstaceyerin.

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *