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March 2, 2004 |
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Top
Stories |
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Legislation and Regulation |
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Clinical
Research |
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Pharmaceutical
News |
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Association
News |
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Calendar |
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eNews
Archives |
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Tandem BMT Meetings
Feb 10 - 14, 2005
Keystone, Colorado |
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(Note: Answers to this interactive poll are anonymous.)
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Last Month's
Poll Results
Denial of insurance coverage for clinical trials is a
variable and complex issue. To get a better sense of the
severity of this problem among ASBMT eNEWS readers, please
tell us which of these most closely matches your
experience:
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Coverage for clinical trials is not a problem at our
center. |
(159) 24% |
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Coverage for clinical trials is a significant problem
at our center. |
(414) 63% |
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Coverage appears to be available only for NIH-sponsored
trials -- not for local trials. |
(78) 12% |
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Coverage is available for Phase III trials but not
routinely available for Phase I and II trials. |
(2)
0% |
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Other |
(3)
0% |
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Calendar |
•
March
American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)
95th Annual Meeting
March 27-31
Orange County Convention Center
Orlando, Fla.
European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT)
30th Annual Meeting
March 28 - 31
Palau de Congressos de Catalunya
Barcelona, Spain
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April
American Society of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology (ASPH/O)
17th Annual Scientific Meeting
April 29-May 2
Westin St. Francis Hotel
San Francisco
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May
International Society for Cellular Therapy (ISCT)
10th Annual Meeting
May 7-10
The Burlington Hotel
Dublin, Ireland
American Society of Transplantation (AST)
American Transplant Congress
May 14-19
Hynes Convention Center
Boston
World Marrow Donor Association (WMDA)
5th International Donor Registry Conference
May 26-29
Keio University Mita Campus
Tokyo, Japan
• June
Canadian Hematology Society (CHS)
Annual Meeting
June 3
London Convention Centre
London, Ontario
Canadian Blood and Marrow Transplant Group (CBMTG)
Biennial Meeting
June 3-6
London Convention Centre
London, Ontario
American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO)
40th Annual Meeting
June 5-8
Ernest N. Morial Convention Center
New Orleans
International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR)
2nd Annual Meeting
June 10-13
Boston Seaport Hotel
Boston
2005
Tandem BMT Meetings
(Combined ASBMT and IBMTR/ABMTR annual meetings)
Feb. 10-14
Keystone Resort
Keystone, Colo.
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Top
Stories |
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Artificial blood being tested at 20 hospitals
Severely bleeding trauma patients at 20 hospitals across the
United States could receive PolyHeme – made by extracting
oxygen-carrying hemoglobin from human red blood cells – instead
of saline solution. Patients will be randomly selected to
receive the product from Northfield Laboratories in Evanston,
Ill., and the research surrounding the substitute must be
publicized beforehand in the communities where the study is
being conducted so patients can opt out.
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South Korean researchers get stem cells from
cloned embryo
Using the cloning technique pioneered in Dolly the sheep,
researchers in South Korea created 20 human embryonic stem cell
clusters, one of which developed into a stem cell line,
according to research published in the online version of the
journal Science. The scientists from Seoul National
University used 242 eggs donated by 16 unpaid volunteers to
culture 30 blastocysts.
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Harvard University to establish Harvard Stem
Cell Institute
Next month, Harvard University plans to announce its
intention to open the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, a center for
growing and studying human embryonic stem cells. Scientists
involved in the project estimate they will need to raise about
$100 million to fund the new institute.
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Word from President Armand Keating, M.D.
If you turn on the movie projector in your head and
think “cowboy,” what do you see on the screen?
Is it a noble knight of the Old West? A rugged
individualist. Self-reliant. At one with nature. Keeper of
‘The Code.’ The likes of Gene and Roy.
Or is it an anachronism from a bygone era? Undisciplined.
Roughshod. A gunslinger. The likes of Jesse and Billy.
Cowboy is one of those terms that conjures a dichotomy of
images.
If you’re like me, you’ve probably had occasion to hear a
sister and brother in another area of medicine refer to
blood and marrow transplanters as cowboys or gunslingers.
It’s usually said with a wink and a smile, but it betrays
an undercurrent that some think of transplanters as
individualists who frequently charge ahead on therapies
when others might pause until there is more evidence and
group experience.
The image probably comes with the territory, being out
here on a frontier. Many matured areas of medicine have
well-established guidelines and standards, accepted
protocols and critical pathways. Ours is a developing
field. One that’s moving so fast it seems that if you take
a month away from the literature and scientific meetings,
you’re no longer practicing state-of-the-art medicine.
Yet consider how far we’ve come in taming our frontier in
just the past decade. Limiting your view to just the work
of our 10-year-old society, we’ve developed guidelines for
transplant centers, guidelines for training, an acclaimed
voluntary accreditation program for transplant centers and
treatment guidelines that are supported by evidence-based
reviews. We’ve created a scholarly peer-review journal, a
highly regarded annual meeting and a clinical trials
network.
The newest example of that spirit is a unified public
policy platform. This past year, representatives of six
organizations in our field – representing clinicians,
investigators, stem cell processing, registries and donor
procurement – have collaborated on a document that
represents jointly held beliefs and principles on issues
such as access to care, cost of care, patient and donor
rights, confidentiality and clinical research. You can
read more about it below in the Association News section.
Crafting a document that has the support of all the major
BMT/stem cell transplant organizations has been no small
achievement. With our policies and beliefs codified, we’re
now better able to work as a coalition of organizations to
address lawmakers and regulators and achieve positive
outcomes for our patients in public policy arenas.
Saddle up.
– Armand |
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Legislation and Regulation |
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New Jersey plans to fund stem cell research
New Jersey Governor James McGreevey’s $26.2 billion state
budget contains a proposal to spend $6.5 million to create the
New Jersey Stem Cell Research Institute. The institute would be
built in New Brunswick and run by the University of Medicine and
Dentistry of New Jersey and Rutgers University.
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Clinical
Research |
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Scientists create self-renewing spinal nerve cells
By using retroviral overexpression of human telomerase
reverse transcriptase, scientists at the University of Rochester
Medical Center created phenotypically restricted subpopulations
of glia or neurons. When these neurons were xenografted to both
fetal brain and injured adult spinal cord in rats, they matured
as neurons and survived for six months, according to research
published in the March issue of the journal Nature
Biotechnology.
Cord blood cells differentiate into myocytes in one patient
Stem cells from a cord blood transplant transformed into
myocytes and were found in the heart tissue of a boy who
received the transplant, say scientists at Duke University
Medical Center. The boy died of an infection, and a series of
stains were used to differentiate the female cells of the donor
from the male cells of the patient, according to findings
presented at the 2004 Tandem BMT Meetings in Orlando.
Researchers identify structure in brain containing neural
stem cells
A unique ribbon of astrocytes in the subventricular zone in
the adult human brain proliferate in vivo and behave as
multipotent progenitor cells in vitro, according to a
report in the Feb. 19 issue of the journal Nature.
Researchers at the University of California San Francisco say
this cell structure, which lines the lateral ventricles, is
unique in that it has not been observed in other vertebrates.
Japanese researchers receive approval to use locally
produced stem cells
Japanese researchers have received approval to perform
medical research using domestically created human embryonic stem
cells. Scientists at Kyoto University plan to use stem cells to
generate blood vessels for test implantation in mice.
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Association
News |
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Unified policy platform approved by six transplant organizations
A unified policy for legislative and regulatory advocacy has
been adopted by ASBMT and five other stem cell therapy and blood
and marrow transplant organizations. The coordinated platform
addresses seven areas of common concern: access to care, cost of
care, patient and donor rights, confidentiality, clinical
research, safety, and patient and public awareness and
education.
Contact your senators about NMDP re-authorization legislation
ASBMT leaders are encouraging members and other health
professionals to write, call or visit their U.S. Senators about
legislation to re-authorize the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP).
Armand Keating installed as ASBMT president
Armand Keating, M.D., chief of medical services at Princess
Margaret Hospital/Ontario Cancer Institute, has been installed
as ASBMT president. Robert Negrin, M.D., of Stanford University,
is the newly elected vice president, to become president in
2006.
Record attendance at Tandem BMT Meetings
Registration for the 2004 Tandem BMT Meetings in Orlando was
a record 1,586. The previous record was 1,426 last year.
Attendees came from 45 countries.
Audiocassettes available for Tandem BMT Meetings presentations
All plenary and concurrent scientific sessions, workshops
and oral abstracts are available on audiocassette – along with
the conferences of the transplant nurses, BMT pharmacists,
clinical research associates and BMT center administrators. The
programs can be purchased online.
Tandem BMT Meetings abstracts ready for viewing
Abstracts submitted by investigators in 28 countries were
presented at the Tandem BMT Meetings in Orlando. All abstracts
are published in the February 2004 issue of Biology of Blood and
Marrow Transplantation (Vol. 10, No. 2, Supplement), and also
are posted online.
March 31 deadline for $31,000 young investigator editorial award
The Associazione Donatori Midollo Osseo (ADMO) Federazione
Italiana is offering a prize of 25,000 euros – about $31,000 US
– for an article judged best on transplantation of hematopoietic
stem cells from unrelated donors. The competition is open to
investigators of all nationalities not more than 40 years old,
for an article published in any scientific journal with an
impact factor higher than 2. The deadline is March 31.
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