Hematology 2006 and the Program and Abstracts Book
Did you miss the 2006 ASH™ Annual Meeting? Check your mailbox — all ASH members who were not able to attend the annual meeting will be receiving a copy of Hematology 2006, the American Society of Hematology’s Education Program Book.
Need an extra copy? Additional copies of both Hematology 2006 or the 2006 Program and Abstracts Book (the abstract issue of Blood) can be ordered from the online ASH store. Hematology 2006 includes review articles from the 2006 ASH Annual Meeting Education Program — each chapter relates to a session presented. The 2006 Program and Abstracts Book contains all of the abstracts submitted for the 2006 annual meeting as well as speaker, exhibit, award, and general ASH information.
If you have questions about the 2006 Program and Abstracts Book or the Education Program Book, e-mail customerservice@hematology.org.
Learn more about ASH publications.
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NIDDK Hosts Workshop on miRNAs
A two-day workshop on “MicroRNA in Cellular Development and Hematopoiesis,” sponsored by the Hematology and Endocrine Biology Programs of NIDDK at the National Institutes of Health, will be held at The Historic Inns of Annapolis Conference Center, on April 23 and 24, 2007. This workshop will review current information on the biogenesis and function of miRNAs and on how miRNA-mediated post-translational regulation influences organ and tissue development and function, with a particular focus on hematopoiesis. For information about registration and abstract submission, contact Amy Amerson of The Scientific Consulting Group at 301-670-4990 or aamerson@scgcorp.com.
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Award Opportunities at ASH
ASH has 10 award opportunities to help hematologists throughout their careers. Members can access the 2007 applications for the Trainee Research Award, Clinical Research Training Institute, and Mentor Award applications online.
- The Trainee Research Award is open to medical students, residents,
and selected undergraduates and provides monetary support for a
three-month research project and travel to the ASH annual meeting.
Applications must be submitted by March 15, 2007.
- The prestigious Clinical Research Training Institute provides mentoring, career development, and
research project protocol refinement to 20 hematology fellows and
junior faculty each year through the year-long program. Applications
must be submitted by March 30, 2007.
- Through the ASH™ Mentor Award you can say “thank you” to some
one who has dedicated his or her time and attention to teaching the
next generation or who has personally made an impact on your
career development. Applications must be submitted by May 4,
2007.
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Online Access to ASH™-SAP Second Edition Expires May 1
The third edition of the ASH Self-Assessment Program (ASH-SAP) will be released in May 2007. This new edition will give practicing hematologists the opportunity to earn more continuing medical education (CME) credits and will include a new chapter on plasma cell dyscrasias as well as expanded supplemental resources.
Guidelines set by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) specify that the ability to earn CME credits through the second edition of the ASH-SAP must cease when the new edition is released. In order to comply with ACCME guidelines, online access to the ASH-SAP second edition will expire on May 1, 2007, although users will still be able to claim CME credit with the paper test sheet through December 31, 2007.
Similarly, points earned toward American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Maintenance of Certification (MOC) using the second edition of the ASH-SAP must be claimed by May 1, 2007.
Contact the ASH Education and Training Department at 202-776-0544 or cme@hematology.org with any questions or concerns about the ASH-SAP, online access, or claiming credits.
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Mentor Award
This year, ASH honored not only those who have achieved great prominence in hematology, but also those who help people get started. With the ASH Mentor Award, the Society seeks to recognize the important role mentors play in helping to advance science.
Mentors can play many significant roles in the lives of others. They can advise, advocate, teach, criticize, or “simply” serve as a good role model. All these qualities and more are honored with this new award, given for the first time at the annual meeting in December. Two award winners were chosen — one an outstanding mentor in the basic sciences and the other an outstanding clinical investigator mentor.
The inaugural ASH Mentor Award winners are Samuel E. Lux, IV, MD, of the Children’s Hospital of Boston, for mentorship in clinical investigation, and Deane F. Mosher, MD, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for mentorship in basic science.
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“The Good Mentor” - Dr. Deane F. Mosher
Joanne Murphy-Ullrich, PhD
Dr. Murphy-Ullrich is Professor of Pathology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Co-Director of the BioMatrix Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Center.
Good scientific mentoring is akin to good parenting. When you start your career, your mentor must be there to meet your constant demands, assuage your insecurities, and pick you up, all the while showing you how to move forward by example. The good mentor must encourage your development, give you the ability to make some mistakes along the way, and know how to turn these “failures” into learning opportunities. The good mentor must know when it is time to leave the nest and give you the support and confidence to take that frightening step. The good mentor should also be willing to be a colleague as your career progresses.
Deane F. Mosher, MD, is a rare and truly remarkable person. I am most fortunate to have known Deane for nearly 27 years, practically all of my scientific career. He has an impressive legacy of mentoring successful basic scientists and clinician scientists, particularly women. Deane is clearly deserving of the ASH Mentor Award as he exemplifies the characteristics of the good mentor.
I first met Dr. Mosher when I was a second-year graduate student in the Department of Pathology at the University of Wisconsin. One of my classmates was a student in Deane’s lab. Deane was a new assistant professor, fresh from his fellowship work in Helsinki where he made some key early discoveries regarding the important extracellular matrix molecule, fibronectin. I would spend time in Deane’s lab while visiting my classmate – although I was not his student, he always took the time to chat and to explain the workings of his lab. When I decided to focus on extracellular matrix for my thesis work, I asked Deane to be on my thesis committee. As my thesis was on the renal consequences of autoimmune responses to fibronectin, Deane was an important member of my committee. We generated several forms of chemically-modified fibronectin for this project – Deane’s expertise in the protein chemistry of the fibronectin molecule was essential. Even though he was not my thesis mentor, Deane was exceedingly generous with his time, knowledge, advice, and laboratory resources. One of his post-docs trained me in several techniques and I regularly used his lab equipment. He helped me with manuscript writing as well.
When it came time to choose a post-doctoral fellowship, it was clear to me that it would be hard to find a more intelligent and giving mentor than Deane Mosher. In 1983, I started my post-doctoral fellowship in his lab. It was a rather unique and, in retrospect, critically important environment. At that time, all of Deane’s post-docs, graduate students, and most of his technicians were women. Many of them were married and one had a young child. It seems hard to remember what it was like for women in science nearly 25 years ago, but there were few role models for women scientists who wanted both a career and a family. I learned from my colleagues in Deane’s lab how to be effective at both career and family. Deane provided the supportive atmosphere that allowed the people in his lab to work flexible schedules and he never tallied hours or created unreasonable demands or structures that competed with family duties. The quality of one’s science was the sole determinant of one’s success in Deane’s lab. I think that Deane’s tacit assumption that his “hyphenated” women scientists were simply the best gave us all the confidence to pursue this difficult course. In fact, all of my post-doctoral fellow contemporaries in the lab are now in senior faculty positions at major research institutions. He provided first-rate mentoring in how do outstanding, critical, and innovative science in a supportive, collegial atmosphere. Deane was also well ahead of his time in recognizing the importance of the clinical relevance of basic science pursuits — something that today we call translational science.
In 1986, it was time to move on and I accepted a research associate position at UAB. During this time, I maintained frequent contact with Deane. He generously provided thrombospondin protein to me for years while I was getting started on my independent career. He read my grants and greatly assisted me when I was writing my first R01 application in 1989. He provided me with his typically sage advice on what constitutes a good grant – the freestyle Olympic figure skating program analogy. Deane remarked that my draft R01 read like a legal brief and that no reviewer would be able to follow it. He likened a good grant to an Olympic figure skating program – you have a limited number of opportunities to impress the judges and the transitions must be seamless. I still have the letter in which he wrote this and I have passed on this advice to all of my students and post-docs.
Now as a senior faculty member, I still value my interactions with Deane. We collaborated in the mid 1990s on important studies from my lab defining key sequences in thrombospondin that activate latent TGF-ß, on use of his recombinant thrombospondin fragments of the N-terminal domain in signaling of cell survival, and on some exciting collaborative studies with a third investigator on thrombospondin transactivation of a growth factor receptor. To this day, I am still impressed with the depth and breadth of his knowledge and his keen insights. I still feel that I have much to learn from him. Yet, he is never overbearing and he never positions himself as the senior scientist, something that would be well justified.
Despite his success over the years, Deane remains humble and I am sure this award is a source of embarrassment as well as pride. But this too is part of his charm and strength as “the good mentor.”
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Dr. Samuel Lux on Mentoring
The Hematologist asked Dr. Samuel Lux to answer a few questions about being honored with the ASH Mentor Award. His responses follow.
What does this award mean to you?
This award means more to me than any other I've received. My previous awards were all individual achievement awards, in teaching or science, but this award reflects not only my own success, but the success of the many men and women I've had a chance to work with over my career. That's the unique joy of mentoring. You gain pleasure from the success of others. It's like having grandchildren. You can recognize the successful mentor because they can't help bragging about their protégés.
How important is mentoring for trainees?
I think it is vital. I suppose it's possible to forge a successful career on your own but it is surely harder, and I would bet less fun. Most of us owe a large measure of our success to the efforts of others. Certainly, I do. I would never have chosen pediatrics or Children's Hospital Boston except for a chance meeting with my own mentor, David Nathan, and my success is due in large measure to his unflagging attention to my career.
What advice would you give others about mentoring?
I usually summarize a mentor as an advocate, coach, teacher, guide, role model, valued friend, door opener, benevolent authority, available resource, cheerful critic, and career enthusiast. It's all those roles and more. I see mentoring as a continuum with recruiting and advising. I think it's something that starts very early in your career, the first time someone comes to work for you, and continues for a lifetime. As to advice, I would say to first be a friend and an interested colleague of your mentees — someone they can come to whenever they do something interesting. Second, focus on their strengths — emphasize those in career choices. Make them shoot high and do high quality work, but be a cheerful and constructive critic. Third, be their advocate in getting important trips, talks, session chairmanships, and the other little plums of academic life. Offer their name for important jobs, even when you desperately don't want them to leave. Fourth, protect their time but make sure they take on responsibilities that are necessary for the careers they desire. Someone who aspires to be a division chief or a department chair needs to hone clinical and teaching skills as well as do research. Fifth, don't try to make them a clone of yourself. This is, I think, one of the biggest mistakes. And, sixth, stick with them. Being a mentor is a lifetime responsibility, even after they move on to other institutions. We have brought our alums together at ASH for something we call the Vampire Dinner for more than 30 years. We do it in part to see old friends, but also to remind our alums that they are still a very important part of our lives and that we are extremely proud of them.
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Call for Award Nominations
ASH members are invited to submit nominations for the William Dameshek Prize, Henry M. Stratton Medal, and E. Donnall Thomas Lecture and Prize for the year 2007. Letters of nomination must include a brief paragraph summarizing the nominee's contributions to hematology as well as a current bio-sketch or curriculum vitae. Nominations are due by February 1 and should be sent by postal mail to American Society of Hematology, Attn: Courtney Krier, 1900 M Street, NW, Suite 200, Washington, DC 20036, or via e-mail to ckrier@hematology.org.
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NIH is Reauthorized in the Wee Hours of the Morning Before Congress Adjourns
Roy Silverstein, MD
Dr. Silverstein is Chairman of the Department of Cell Biology and Vice-Chairman for Translational Research at the Lerner Research Institute of Cleveland Clinic. He is also Chair of the ASH Committee on Government Affairs.
As one of its final acts prior to adjourning for the year, the Congress passed legislation to reauthorize the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for the first time in 13 years. The ASH membership should be very proud that ASH almost single-handedly helped secure significant positive changes to the bill.
With the last NIH reauthorization having occurred in 1993, the process marked an important opportunity for Congress to impact the future direction of the NIH. The original version of the bill, drafted by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Joe Barton (R-TX), was intended to restructure the NIH, set its authorization levels, and encourage multidisciplinary research. While many research organizations supported the House version of bill, including several cancer-related organizations, ASH did not endorse the House version because it would have capped NIH funding increases at a maximum of 5 percent annually.
ASH believed that the NIH legislation should authorize larger annual increases in the agency’s budget so that congressional appropriators would have more leeway to restore funding levels to those recommended by non-partisan experts. With current biomedical inflation nearing 4 percent and future inflation levels impossible to predict, the House-passed bill could have put the NIH budget at considerable future risk. Furthermore, the bill included a provision requiring that 50 percent of future NIH budget increases be tapped for a Common Fund, making it likely that budgets for institutes and centers would not have been able to keep up with biomedical inflation and would run the real risk of falling significantly behind current inadequate funding levels.
ASH supported some features of the House-passed bill, including its requirement for increased NIH accountability, but urged the Senate to examine several issues with the bill, including: the impact the Common Fund would have on investigator-initiated RO1 grants; the impact structural and procedural changes would have on congressional oversight; and how the bill would affect opportunities to train and fund new researchers.
As a result of ASH sharing its concerns with the Senate, significant improvements were made to the House-passed bill, including increased authorizations for annual appropriations and changes to the way the Common Fund is financed. The final bill approved by both the House and Senate authorizes a 7 percent increase in FY 2007, 8 percent in FY 2008, and “such sums as may be necessary” for FY 2009. The bill also states that Common Fund growth cannot be lower than the same percentage of overall NIH growth as the previous year and is capped at 5 percent of total NIH spending.
More information on NIH Funding and ASH's advocacy efforts can be found on the ASH Web site.
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FDA Staff and Myeloma Experts Meet to Discuss Clinically Relevant Endpoints and New Drug Approvals for Myeloma
Kenneth Anderson, MD
Dr. Anderson is Kraft Family Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Chief, Division of Hematologic Neoplasia and Director, Jerome Lipper Multiple Myeloma Center, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
The ASH™/FDA Workshop on Clinical Endpoints in Multiple Myeloma was held in Washington, DC, on October 26, 2006. The workshop began with James N. George, MD, Past President of ASH, welcoming participants and citing the successful ASH/FDA Workshop on Acute Leukemia, which provided the framework for this collaborative workshop on multiple myeloma (MM). These workshops were initiated because the FDA wanted to participate in an informed discussion with leaders in the field regarding emerging endpoints that might be used to support claims of efficacy for products with potential utility in the treatment of hematologic diseases. ASH agreed to provide the leadership and to host a discussion that could provide useful material to the FDA and that could be used in the FDA's formal presentations to its Oncology Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC). Chaired by Richard Pazdur, MD, Director, Office of Oncology Drug Products, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and myself, this workshop brought together FDA staff and myeloma experts to provide guidance for definition of clinically relevant endpoints that could potentially expedite new drug approval for multiple myeloma. The format of the workshop was informal, with participants seated around a large U-shaped table. This facilitated active discussion and debate following each presentation. In addition to panel members, an audience of 175 physicians and scientists from academic and pharmaceutical institutions participated in the public afternoon session.
Drs. Richard Pazdur and Robert Kane of the FDA first outlined the regulatory basis for marketing authorization, types of approval, drugs approved for MM, and study designs and endpoints supporting drug approval. Ann Quinn Young, Program Director for the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation (MMRF), next described two prior MMRF/FDA workshops defining the framework for new drug approval in MM, as well as sponsored novel drug trials ongoing in the context of MMRF and the Multiple Myeloma Research Consortium. Dr. Brian Durie, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the International Myeloma Foundation, described the International Myeloma Working Group (IMWG) criteria for classification of myeloma and related disorders, as well as the recently proposed IMWG international uniform response criteria for multiple myeloma. I then cited the examples of recent new drug approvals in myeloma, including thalidomide, lenalidomide, and bortezomib, and the need for early partnership of industry, academia, the FDA, the National Cancer Institute, and patient advocates in order to expedite novel drug development in myeloma.
Panels next examined appropriate clinical trial design and endpoints for new drug approval for stages of disease including monoclonal gammopathy of unclear significance (MGUS)/smoldering multiple myeloma (SMM), newly diagnosed myeloma, maintenance therapy, relapsed myeloma, and relapsed and refractory myeloma. Within the MGUS/SMM panel led by Robert A. Kyle, MD, of the Mayo Clinic, the importance of defining a population at high risk of progression to MM was paramount, with progression to MM the most clinically relevant endpoint. Within the newly diagnosed myeloma panel chaired by Vincent Rajkumar, MD, of the Mayo Clinic, rate and extent of response are primary endpoints, with associated clinical benefit. Within the transplant candidate population who go on to receive high-dose therapy and stem cell transplantation, response assessment is done prior to transplantation, and it is therefore not possible to assess the durability of response to initial therapy. However, in the non-transplant population, time-to-progression, progression-free survival, and overall survival are measures of clinical benefit, in addition to response extent and frequency.
There are no standard maintenance therapies to prolong the duration of response in myeloma, and the maintenance therapy panel led by Keith Stewart, MD, of the Mayo Clinic felt that clinically relevant endpoints for evaluation of a novel maintenance therapy would include prolongation of event-free survival and overall survival, as well as improvement in response. Within the relapsed myeloma panel, chaired by Donna Weber, MD, of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Institute, clinically relevant endpoints for new drug approval included extent and rate of response and durability of response, with time to progression as a surrogate for overall survival.
Finally, the relapsed and refractory myeloma panel, led by Paul Richardson, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, identified this patient population, which remains an important unmet medical need in MM and therefore offers an opportunity to rapidly demonstrate benefit. Assessment of the clinical benefit of novel agents in this subgroup should include response rate and extent, as well as assessment of duration of response and time to progression.
Workshop information and slide presentations
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ASH Members Awarded Membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies
Nancy C. Andrews, MD, PhD
George R. Minot Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Hematology/
Oncology, Children's Hospital Boston |
Chi Van Dang, MD, PhD
Johns Hopkins Family Professor of Oncology Research, Professor of Medicine, Cell Biology, Oncology, and Pathology, Vice Dean for Research, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine |
Rudolf Jaenisch, MD
Professor of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Founding Member, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research |
Joseph Loscalzo, MD, PhD
Hersey Professor of the Theory and Practice of Physics, Harvard Medical School, Chair, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital |
Ajit P. Varki, MD
Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Cellular and Molecular Medicine, Department of Medicine, University of California, San Diego |
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