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Vol. 38, No. 18
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2-17-2009
By: Julia Harris Not taking NO for an answer
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What exactly is multiple myeloma?
Multiple myeloma, a blood cancer in the bone marrow that causes the body to produce too many of a certain type of plasma cells, is a disease more typically suffered by people over the age of 70.
It tends to be more common among farmers, bakers and African Americans.
“People hear it and they immediately think ‘melanoma,’ which it isn’t,” said Craig Hofmeister, assistant professor of medicine and co-leader of the Myeloma Program at the James Cancer Hospital.
It’s more like leukemia. In the bone marrow, where blood is made, there are three types of cells: White, red and platelet. White cells, Hofmeister says, are as complex as AT&T.
“There are so many divisions of white cells, there are thousands made per second and thousands dying per second. One whole division is called plasma cells, which make the antibodies that float around in your body and attack bacteria.”
Because there are so many different types of bacteria that our immune systems encounter, there are many different types of antibodies — and plasma cells that make them. As bodies age, it’s not uncommon for plasma cells to degenerate.
“One of the first ways they degenerate is they figure out a way to not die,” Hofmeiser said. “And they continue to reproduce and all these cells have the same way of not dying.”
All of these cells also produce the same type and size of antibody, producing an excess that can clog up the kidney. And the plasma cells themselves — called myeloma — end up squeezing out the healthy red blood cells and platelets, causing the patient to become anemic.
Finally, the myeloma cells push out of the bone marrow and into the hard part of bone, replacing the healthy bone with masses of soft tissue.
“So if you twist the wrong way, you could get a hip fracture, or if you pick up something small you could break your arm,” Hofmeister said.
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Did you know?
For more details on the upcoming gala (March 7) and the 5K race (Sept. 6), see their Web site at mmore.org |
Windows rattled in Steve Fink’s sunny, overheated office on the top floor of Denney Hall as the crashing deconstruction of nearby Lord Hall sent up clouds of pebbly dust.
It was fitting background music to the story Fink was telling inside that office, a story that began with a telephone call about Sarah, his then-22-year-old daughter and ended up bringing his world — like that crumbly old building next door — crashing down around his ears.
“I was in Boston at the time and I got a call from my wife: Sarah has cancer,” said Fink, an associate professor of English who’s been at Ohio State for 27 years.
He swallowed, looked out the window and rolled a few feet in his chair before speaking again. “It was two weeks before she was due to graduate from college,” he said. “I felt completely helpless to do anything about it.”
Adding to that feeling of helplessness was the relative unfamiliarity of the cancer Sarah had contracted. The incidence of multiple myeloma is low in the general population; researchers estimate that only about 20,000 new cases are diagnosed each year.
It also has no cure.
“At the time Sarah was diagnosed, the estimated time between treatment and relapse was two to four years,” Fink said. “Since 2005, the recurrence rate has been stretched to four to 10 years. So it’s more or less doubled. There’s been a lot of progress made and the pace seems to be accelerating.”
After a grueling regimen of chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant, Sarah went into complete remission and currently is living the life “of any normal 25-year-old,” Fink said, only going in twice a year for blood work to make sure all is still well.
“Patients in remission do live normal lives,” Fink said. “But the doctors are very clear: It’s not a question of if the myeloma will come back, but when it will. Progress is not a cure.”
The idea of this disease returning to wreak havoc in their lives was not one Fink or his wife, Nancy Kaufmann, were willing to face without a fight. So in December 2005, when Sarah was discharged with a clean bill of health, they asked her doctors what they could do to help.
“He said there’s a desperate need for funding for research,” Fink recalled. “One of the reasons they haven’t found a cure for this is because research moves slowly. If we can accelerate and multiply the research efforts, maybe we can make this at least a manageable illness, if not find a cure.”
With that charge in mind, and knowing that the danger still slumbered in their daughter’s bones, the couple established a foundation called Multiple Myeloma Opportunities for Research and Education (MMORE) to raise money and awareness for myeloma research.
They contacted two physicians with the James Cancer Hospital’s Multiple Myeloma Research Clinic, Craig Hofmeister and Don Benson, and partnered with them on two major fundraising events last year — a dinner-dance gala and a 5-mile race — that together raised $120,000.
The organization also is preparing a special video presentation, to be shown at its second annual gala on March 7, showing personal stories of patients and families coming to terms with the multiple myeloma diagnosis.
“The great thing about MMORE is, it’s a local organization that reaches out to people and encourages them to be part of the solution,” said Hofmeister, who is primarily involved in clinical research protocols with myeloma patients.
He is hopeful that MMORE’s efforts will bring about a sea change in the number of Ohio patients who participate in clinical trials for the disease.
“Right now, only 2 percent of patients participate in trials. That means that 98 percent of patients get diagnosed, get treated and get out of the system, so their experience is lost, nothing is learned and no one’s the wiser,” Hofmeister said. “If out of all 700 patients diagnosed in Ohio, all of them went on trial, wouldn’t that be something?”
Hofmeister’s energy and commitment are a great encouragement to Fink, who says the process of starting MMORE, while begun as a very personal response to his own family’s trauma, has been gratifying on a broader level as well.
“Our efforts are to find a cure for multiple myeloma and that’s a national and international goal in a lot of ways, but we’re also an OSU family and we’re supporting the work being done here,” he said.
“I love the fact that this is bringing together my personal and professional life, the institution I’ve become part of for my whole career.”
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