A playlist of three videos, each providing an overview of leukemia, lymphoma or myeloma.
Innovations in Research
LLS is the world's largest voluntary health organization dedicated to funding blood cancer research and providing education and patient services. In fact, LLS funds more blood cancer research than any other voluntary health agency.
When LLS was founded in 1949, a diagnosis of leukemia, lymphoma or myeloma was almost always fatal. Today, thanks to innovative research funded in part by LLS, survival rates for some blood cancers have doubled, or even tripled. In fact, blood cancer survival rates rose by as much as four-fold from 1960 to 2000.
A major reason for the success of our organization lies in the innovations that have come from our research programs - discoveries that have led or contributed to standard treatments and that have saved the lives of patients battling many types of cancer. Read about two such innovations below.
Gleevec®
Ten years ago, the five-year survival rate for patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) was less than 50 percent. Then, an LLS-funded researcher developed the targeted drug Gleevec® (approved 2001). Now, the survival rate for patients with newly diagnosed, chronic phase CML has nearly doubled, to 95 percent, and they enjoy a high quality of life. Gleevec is also FDA-approved for patients with a rare form of stomach cancer called GIST, and the drug is being tested for patients with many other kinds of malignancies.
Therapy Acceleration Program
Innovations in research have helped us become the third-largest generator of private support among all U.S. voluntary health organizations - behind only The American Cancer Society and The American Heart Association. This is truly phemenonal when you consider the "orphan status" of our diseases.
One such innovation that makes the future look even brighter for patients with blood cancers is a new program that will bring more treatments to more patients faster. Through our Therapy Acceleration Program, we are partnering with biotechnology companies to facilitate the rapid development of promising new therapies that might otherwise go undeveloped. The program is helping to overcome a key barrier in getting patients into clinical trials by developing novel models that will bring those trials into communities where patients live. The Therapy Acceleration Program is also accelerating the development of new discoveries in its pipeline by funding applied research, paving the way for FDA approval.
