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| June 1, 2009 |
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Top
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Legislation and Regulation |
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Clinical
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Biopharmaceutical News |
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Association
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Calendar |
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Job &
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Monthly Journal |
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eNews
Archives |
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| Calendar |
• June
European Hematology Association (EHA)
14th Congress
June 4-7
International Congress Center Berlin
Berlin, Germany
7th Annual International Umbilical Cord Blood Transplantation Symposium
Cord Blood Forum
June 5-6
Los Angeles Airport Marriott
Los Angeles, California
FOCIS 2009
Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies (FOCIS)
June 11-14
San Francisco Marriott
San Francisco, California
2009 Pan Pacific Lymphoma Conference
University of Nebraska Medical Center
June 22-26
Fairmont Orchid
Kohala Coast, Big Island, Hawaii
• July
International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR)
6th Annual Meeting
July 8-11
Centre Convencions Internacional
Barcelona, Spain
Cancer Biostatistics Workshop
American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)
July 12-18
The Lodge at Sonoma
Sonoma, California
Molecular Biology in Clinical Oncology
American Association for Cancer Research (AACR)
July 17-24
Given Institute of the University of Colorado
Aspen, Colorado
Cryo 2009
Society for Cryobiology
46th Annual Meeting
July 19-23
Hokkaido University
Sapporo, Japan
• September
International Society for Experimental Hematology (ISEH)
38th Annual Scientific Meeting
Sept. 9-12
Hotel Divani Caravel
Athens, Greece
American Association of Tissue Banks (AATB)
33rd Annual Meeting
Sept. 13-16
MGM Grand
Las Vegas, Nevada
European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO)
Annual Meeting
Sept. 20-24
Internationale Congress Centrum
Berlin, Germany
26th National Oncology Economics Conference
Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC)
Sept. 22-25
Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center
Washington, D.C.
American Society of Multicultural Health and Transplant Professionals (ASMHTP)
17th Annual Meeting
Sept. 23-25
Green Valley Ranch
Las Vegas, Nevada
• October
Inaugural Australasian Meeting
International Society for Cellular Therapy
Oct. 17
University of South Australia
Adelaide, Australia
Cytokines 2009: Cellular and Cytokine Interactions in Health and Disease
International Cytokine Society (ICS)
Oct. 17-21
Lisbon Convention Center
Lisbon, Portugal
American Society for Human Genetics (ASHG)
59th Annual Meeting
Oct. 20-24
Hawaii Convention Center
Honolulu, Hawaii
Lymphoma and Myeloma 2009: An International Congress on Hematologic Malignancies
Imedex
Oct. 22-24
Waldorf Astoria Hotel
New York, New York
Myelodysplastic Syndromes
European School of Hematology
Oct. 22-25
Pullman Mandelieu Hotel
Mandelieu, France
American Association of Blood Banks (AABB)
2009 Annual Meeting
Oct. 24-27
Ernest N. Morial Convention Center
New Orleans, Louisiana
World Conference on Regenerative Medicine
Fraunhofer Institute for Cell Therapy and Immunology
Oct. 29-31
Congress Centre Leipzig
Leipzig, Germany
• November
International Workshop on the Biology, Prevention and Treatment of Relapse after Allogeneic Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation
National Cancer Institute (NCI)
Nov. 2-3
Natcher Auditorium
Bethesda, Maryland
American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics (ASHI)
35th Annual Meeting
Nov. 2-6
Hyatt Regency San Francisco
San Francisco, California
European Society of Gene Therapy (ESGT)
17th Annual Congress
Nov. 21-25
Convention Centre at Hannover Fairground
Hanover, Germany
2nd International Congress on Responsible Stem Cell Research
European School of Haematology (ESH) and Eurocord
Nov. 26-28
Auditorium Rainier III
Monaco
• December
American Society of Hematology (ASH)
51st Annual Meeting
Dec. 5-8
Ernest N. Morial Convention Center
New Orleans, Louisiana
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| Top
Stories |
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Mesenchymal cells deliver protein to kill tumors
Mesenchymal stem cells derived from bone marrow can be programmed to target cancer and deliver a cancer-killing protein called TNF-related apoptosis-inducing ligand or TRAIL. According to findings presented at an American Thoracic Society conference, when injected into mice with breast tumors, these cells killed the tumors but left healthy tissue intact. 
Tobacco settlement trust to fund adult stem cell research
The Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust in Oklahoma will provide $5.5 million for adult stem cell research. The money will be distributed by providing $1 million in grants each year for five years, with $500,000 being used first to plan how the money will be distributed.
Blood cells need pressure from beating heart to grow
To grow in an embryo, blood cells need the pressure of a beating heart. According to a report in the advance online edition of Nature, this finding in a mouse study may help researchers understand how to direct blood formation from embryonic stem cells in the laboratory and point the way to new stem cell-based treatments for a host of blood disorders, such as leukemia.
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 A Word from President Claudio Anasetti, MD
The BMT Tandem Meetings are vitally important forums where we learn the latest developments in hematopoietic cell therapies, plan the clinical research for the year, set the strategies for professional activities, meet colleagues and make lifetime friends.
If you think that the $495 early registration fee, meals included, is a bargain, would it get your attention if I told you the fee might be going up to $2,240? This is the “what if” registration fee that would have to be charged if the meeting had no health care company grants, symposium support and exhibit booth sales.
That possibility is real – not because of the current economic crisis, but a developing concern about the perception of conflict of interest.
In April an Institute of Medicine (IOM) committee on “conflict of interest in medical research, education, and practice” published the preliminary version of a report with recommendations to develop public consensus for “a new system of funding accredited continuing medical education . . . that is free of industry influence, enhances public trust in the integrity of the system, and provides high-quality education.” A recent editorial in the Journal of American Medical Association offers similar views.
Is the current system broken?
Last year the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) issued guidelines dealing precisely with this issue, and required that industry-funded CME should be responsive to gaps in knowledge identified by the course faculty, and that topics and speakers must be selected without industry interference. Hard to argue with that wisdom. The BMT Tandem Meetings follow those precepts and, in fact, we are in the process of further tightening our procedures to strengthen the firewall between educational content and corporate funding.
But that may not be enough to satisfy the IOM committee, which states, “Although individual continuing medical education providers and the accrediting organization for continuing medical education have taken steps to limit industry influence, the dependence of many programs on industry funding raises doubts about how successful these steps can be.”
In truth, without health care company support, ASBMT would not have a clinical research training course, nearly as many new investigator research awards and perhaps not even a peer-review journal. The removal of corporate support from meetings, publications and training programs would greatly diminish our ability to disseminate clinical, translational and basic science information.
Corporate funding of these highly important and worthwhile programs is not black and white. A win-win solution has to be somewhere in the middle.
Some members of the IOM committee did, in fact, express concern about possible unintended harm from a ban on industry sponsorship of professional society activities. It could be a case of losing the good in an effort to achieve the perfect. The negative impact probably would be greatest on smaller societies like ASBMT whose access to corporate support is more limited. A loss of corporate support would pulverize an event like the BMT Tandem Meetings and have severe economic repercussions for its two parent organizations that depend on the meetings’ income.
The JAMA article recommends a number of “interim policies” that further strengthen ACCME guidelines, but would allow some breathing room for medical societies and may by themselves address the issue of perceived conflict of interest. For example, it suggests that journal advertising revenue and exhibit hall fees should be exempt from a ban, since society members can easily distinguish these marketing activities from educational presentations. Other industry funding should not exceed 25 percent of a society’s operating revenue, be unrestricted, pooled and administered by the societies directly.
How this will all shake out remains to be seen. We need to be active in the discussions that will be shaping future policy.
In the meantime, the challenge – for us and for the companies that support our work – is to maintain the safeguards and firewalls that assure decisions are based on the best science and the overriding interest of our patients.
– Claudio
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| Legislation and Regulation |
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North Carolina bill encourages umbilical cord blood donation
The North Carolina House has passed and sent to the Senate a bill to encourage pregnant women to donate umbilical cord blood to help cancer patients. If the bill becomes law, the state Department of Health and Human Services would place information on its Web site to help a pregnant woman decide whether to donate her baby’s cord blood to a public bank or have it stored.
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| Clinical Research |
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Stem cells from marrow attracted to damaged retinal tissue
Kentucky researchers have discovered that stem cells extracted from bone marrow can restore damaged retinal tissue by generating new cells. These stem cells were attracted to damaged retinal pigment epithelium.
Marrow cell injections reduce ischemia from blocked arteries
Injecting cells taken from a patient’s bone marrow into the muscular wall of the heart restores blood flow to hearts with blocked arteries. According to a report in the May 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, ischemia was halved in the study patients who received the marrow cell injection.
Treatment with embryonic stem cells provides heart protection
Mouse embryos treated with embryonic stem cells results in adult mice with a capacity to recover from cardiac injury. According to a report published in the advance online edition of Stem Cells, the mice incorporated 5 percent to 20 percent of the stem cells and were able to recover cardiac function after an induced cardiac injury.
Breast cancer treatment linked to cancer stem cells
A study at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center indicates that breast cancer patients who received chemotherapy before surgery had heightened levels of cancer-initiating stem cells in their bone marrow. In addition, researchers discovered that the level of these cancer-initiating stem cells correlates to a tumor’s lymph node involvement.
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| Biopharmaceutical News |
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FDA reviewing Myfortic, CellCept risk management plans
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is reviewing risk management plans for Novartis AG’s Myfortic and Roche Holding AG’s CellCept. These drugs, used to help prevent organ rejection in transplant patients, are linked to birth defects. The plans must ensure the drug benefits outweigh the risk.
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| Association
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FACT and AABB recommended for bank accreditation
A government advisory panel has recommended that cord blood banks participating in the National Cord Blood Inventory can be accredited by either AABB or the Foundation for the Accreditation of Cellular Therapy (FACT).
H1N1 influenza: Guidelines for HCT centers
The presence of the H1N1 influenza virus in many areas of the country is reason for all hematopoietic stem cell transplant centers and personnel to review infection control procedures. Guidelines are posted on the ASBMT Web site.
Hem/onc centers plan for nuclear terrorism
Plans for distributing patients to local, regional and distant medical centers from the site of a nuclear disaster was one of the purposes of an ASBMT and NMDP co-sponsored workshop last month for representatives of hematology/oncology centers from across the nation.
Scholars selected for 2009 research training course
Twelve young clinicians and investigators have been selected to participate in the third annual ASBMT Transplant Clinical Research Training Course, to be held in July in Park City, Utah.
Workshop considers aGVHD clinical trial endpoints
Experts gathered last month to consider endpoints for clinical trials of drugs and therapies intended to prevent and treat acute graft-versus-host disease. The workshop was a collaboration of ASBMT and CIBMTR with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and several other federal agencies.
Updates under way for evidence-based reviews
A process for updating evidence-based reviews is reported in this month’s issue of Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation. The methodology will be applied to the series of reviews that ASBMT has been developing and publishing for specific diseases since 2001.
‘Be the Match’ places emphasis on diversity
“Patients 50 and older, once considered too risky, are now eligible for transplants,” reports the Wall Street Journal in an extensive article about how the National Marrow Donor Program has changed the name of its registry to “Be the Match” and is stepping up efforts to recruit donors from diverse ethnic backgrounds.
Nearly 400 members participate in online survey
Last month, 395 ASBMT members completed an online questionnaire about the Society’s programs and activities. The large response is helping the board of directors develop a new strategic plan for the Society. The survey results will be reported in an upcoming ASBMT eNEWS.
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