blood cancer

(St. Jude Children's Research Hospital) Ching-Hon Pui, M.D., an eminent leader in the research and treatment of pediatric leukemia at St.

Jude Children's Research Hospital, has been named the recipient of the 2011 Henry M. Stratton Medal from the American Society of Hematology (ASH).

The award recognizes the progress Pui has made in the fight against this blood cancer during the past three decades.

(University of Wisconsin-Madison) By coaxing healthy and diseased human bone marrow to become embryonic-like stem cells, a team of Wisconsin scientists has laid the groundwork for observing the onset of the blood cancer leukemia in the laboratory dish.

Adding the intravenous bone drug Zometa to chemotherapy improves survival in patients with the blood cancer multiple myeloma, new research from the U.K. shows.

(Scott & White Healthcare) Scott & White's Cancer Research Institute is conducting a clinical trial that targets malignant T-cell lymphoma, a type of blood cancer.

(Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres) Scientists of the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ) have discovered that bioavailability and efficacy of the blood cancer drug azacytidine increase when the substance is coupled to a fatty acid.

(Children's Hospital of Philadelphia) Pediatric oncologists have identified specific genes, dubbed partner genes, that fuse with another gene to drive an often-fatal form of leukemia in infants.

By more accurately defining specific partner genes, researchers expect to better predict which infants may benefit from particular treatments.

Oncologists also aim to use this latest knowledge to develop new and more effective therapies for this difficult-to-treat type of blood cancer, called acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

(The Translational Genomics Research Institute) Carriers have nearly twice the risk of developing follicular lymphoma, according to cancer's first genome-wide association study.

(Cell Press) New research describes a molecular tool that shows great promise as a therapeutic for human acute myeloid leukemia, a notoriously treatment-resistant blood cancer.

The study, published by Cell Press in the July 2 issue of the journal Cell Stem Cell, describes exciting preclinical studies in which a new therapeutic approach selectively attacks human cancer cells grown in the lab and in animal models of leukemia.