OK, One More ASH Review

I know I said in my last post that I was done with ASH for the year, but now I need to give you information about one more ASH-related event.

The Lymphoma Research Foundation is doing a series of webinars on presentations from ASH. Next Wednesday, January 15, they will be presenting "Highlights from the American Society of Hematology (ASH) 2024 Annual Meeting: B-Cell Lymphomas." The webinar starts at 2:00pm EST and will last about an hour. The presenter will be Dr. Ann LaCasce of Dana-Farber and Harvard Medical School.

You can register for the webinar here.

I like the LRF webinars. They do a good job of picking speakers and topics. As for this one, if you're interested, keep in mind that this one will focus on all B Cell Lymphomas, not just Follicular Lymphoma. My guess is that Dr. LaCasce will talk about Tafasitamab, and that will be the only thing she talks about regarding FL. But it would be interesting to hear her take on that trial, and to hear abut some non-FL research as well. So it could still be worth the hour if you want to do the Cancer Nerd thing.

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One more quick comment, since there isn't much to say about ASH.

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of being part of the Peer-Reviewed Cancer Research Program, part of the Congressionally-Directed Medical Research Programs. This program gives very large grants to cancer researchers so they can study cancers that affect active military members, veterans, and their families (which amounts to pretty much everybody -- cancer affects us all). The PRCRP proposals are divided into groups based on the type of cancer they focus on, and then groups of reviewers look at them, discuss them, and score them. The reviewers include oncologists and scientists, but also include Consumer Reviewers -- patients, survivors, and caregivers, who provide important insights about how the proposed research might affect patients. 

I served as a Consumer Reviewer this year. I would love to tell you all kinds of details -- who I worked with, what kinds of proposals I looked at, even which panel I served on. But I can't. Strict confidentiality rules.

But I can tell you this -- I am so very excited about the kind of research that's being done now, and that will come us in the next few years, and about the people who are doing that research. I don't know which proposals will ultimately be funded, or which of those will be successful. But the direction we are moving in is awesome. We have so many reasons to be hopeful/ And I like to think I did a good job in representing patients. That could only happen because of all that you share with me, which gives me an understanding of what it means to be a cancer patient, beyond my own experience. So thank you for sharing your lives with me. Keep doing that.

More to come soon. Take care.