Letter from Dr. Dave

As many of you know, Sam had a leukemia that relapsed and he then had a Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT). One of the major obstacles to doing a BMT is graft versus host disease. This is the immune response that can occur between the patient and their new immune system. As Sam had complications from graft versus host disease (GVHD) as well as infections, I have always tried to utilize funds from the HOOT events to try to reduce graft versus host disease as well as infections. Currently, our Lymphocyte Propagation Laboratory (cell farming lab) is utilizing funds from the HOOT Fund to develop immune cells that can fight against a number of infections that frequently occur after a BMT or when someone has GVHD Our hope is that in the next year we willl be able to collaborate with our colleages from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City to run a clinical trial utilizing these infection fighting cells after T- cell depleted (strategy to decrease GVHD) Blood and Bone Marrow Transplants