ASH 2012 – Exciting as always!
From the moment I stepped on to the plan my mind is preoccupied with all things related to ASH. Who will we meet there, what exciting new information will we learn. But, mostly my mind always turns back to my very first ASH in 2004 – an early Christmas gift to myself.
We’ve come a long way!
Back in 2004 in San Diego, the excitement was palpable as Dr. N. Shah presented the findings from the Phase I trial for Dasatinib , later to be named Sprycel® from Bristol-Myers Squibb. This represented great hope for the patients who failed Gleevec ® Novartis, and it was so exciting to be part of it and hear the excitement in the room.
8 Years Later and –Oh Boy! The times they are a changing!
We now report on over 5 drugs and a cool pipeline. Most interestingly is the use of the word ‘cure’ and how some patients on Gleevec are living for years without any drugs and their CML has recurred. Some patients with T315I mutations a death sentence just a few short years ago, are now seeing their disease return to a chronic stable state and hopefully going to transplant in much better health..
Moreover Quality of life for patients on long term TKI therapy is an important part of the talk and we cannot thank our partners in Industry for helping The CML Society of Canada take a leadership role in this when we were given a spot on the panel of the satellite symposium at the 2008 ASH in San Francisco.
The story of CML is one of patient, medical, pharmaceutical industry and government partnerships. Long may this continue – until the last leukemic stem cell is killed and CML patients everyway can one day say ‘once upon a time I had a disease called CML..— Cheryl-Anne Simoneau, President, The CML Society of Canada.
To view our reports:
