Cancer Immunology & Hematology NewsLetter

Volume 5, Number 2

December 2002

CIHB HAPPENINGS

Hematologic Malignancies and the Marrow Microenvironment Workshop

by Yvonne Duglas-Tabor

The Hematologic Malignancies and the Marrow Microenvironment Workshop was held on September 23rd to the 25th at the Double Tree Hotel in Rockville, Maryland. Dr.Kenneth Anderson from the Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, provided an introductory talk on the novel therapies that his laboratory is working on for multiple myeloma (MM). Dr.Anderson hopes to improve patient outcome by targeting the MM cell as well as its bone marrow microenvironment. His talk demonstrated how targeting tumor cells and their bone marrow microenvironment with drugs like thalidomide derivatives, that block angiogenesis, can overcome classical drug resistance. The two day workshop covered the role of the microenvironment in lymphocytic and myeloid leukemias and lymphoma, as well as addressing issues in basic stromal cell biology. It became clear that the marrow environment is important in the development and maintenance of all hematologic malignancies and may provide new and unique targets for therapeutic interventions.

32nd Annual Meeting of the Society for Experimental Hematology

by R. Allan Mufson, Ph.D

The 32nd Annual Meeting of the Society for Experimental Hematology was held at the Fairmont Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal Quebec, July 5-9 2002. Dr. Rainer Storb from the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center gave a plenary lecture on the history of and current perspectives in stem cell transplantation. He reviewed the use of stem cells in treating patients with hematologic malignancies with escalating doses of chemoradiation to the point of marrow toxicity, and rescuing them with stem cell transplants. These protocols revealed the so called "graft versus tumor effect" in which lymphocytes from the donor graft recognize the host's tumor cells as foreign and kill them. Graft vs. host tumor effects form the basis of recently developed non-marrow ablative therapeutic protocols, which lack marrow toxicity inducing regimens, and allow extending stem cell transplantation to the elderly and those with non-malignant genetic hematologic malignancies. Efforts are underway to extend the graft versus tumor effect to include therapeutic approaches to metastatic solid tumors. Future meetings should be of interest to all "investigators" interested in basic research in the molecular and cellular biology associated with hematopoiesis, stem cells and leukemogenesis.

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