Raising Hope - $500,000 Awarded for New Research to Cure Asbestos-Related Cancer

Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation
Wednesday, 28 January 2004

Chris Hahn, Executive Director of the Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation, MARF, faced a difficult but welcome challenge. Mesothelioma is a lethal, severely painful asbestos-related cancer that afflicts about 3,000 Americans every year, many of whom are Navy veterans. Yet it was ignored for decades, even by the federal government, leaving "doing nothing" as the typical treatment recommendation.

MARF was formed in 1999 as a collaboration among all parties involved in the asbestos problem to reverse this hopelessness. Since then, MARF had been working hard - funded entirely by private donations - to accelerate the mesothelioma research needed to develop effective treatments.

Now, in October 2003, these efforts had paid off in a big way. Crowding Hahn's desk were twenty-five superb applications from around the world for MARF's 2003 round of research grants. Each represented a potential, much-needed advance in mesothelioma treatment. The challenge on MARF's still small budget was to fund - at $100,000 apiece - as many of the best projects as possible.

Hahn therefore appealed to MARF's existing donors and contacts for help. He says, "We set an ambitious goal of $200,000 to enable us to fund two more grants, on top of the two we had already budgeted. But the outpouring of support from many mesothelioma patients and their loved ones, several attorneys, and one company formerly involved with asbestos was inspiring. We actually exceeded our goal and raised $265,000 in two months. MARF's Science Advisory Board ranked five applications very highly at the top, so the Board of Directors voted to extend even beyond what we had raised, and awarded $500,000 to fund all five."

All of the studies offer hope of very practical benefit for mesothelioma patients. Dr. Bart Lambrecht, from Erasmus Medical Center in The Netherlands,will test for the first time in mesothelioma a promising new immunotherapy approach using dendritic or sentinel cells. Optimal conditions for this approach will be tested in vitro and in mice. A renowned gene therapy expert, Dr. David Curiel, University of Alabama, aims to overcome a major obstacle in targeting mesothelioma cells without destroying healthy cells. He seeks to develop as the gene delivery device a novel virus which will replicate or multiply itself, but only in the target tumor cells. If successful, each of these studies will build the foundation for a human clinical trial.

Both Dr. Gavin Gordon, Harvard Medical School, and Dr. Bo Lu, Vanderbilt, seek to target and disable genetic features of mesothelioma cells that provide resistance to existing treatments - chemotherapy, in Dr. Gordon's study, and radiation, in Dr. Lu's. Since they focus on existing treatments, these projects have the potential for rapid and relatively inexpensive translation to a patient's bedside.

Finally, Dr. Jill Ohar, Wake Forest University, will analyze an array of clinical and genetic differences between those who develop mesothelioma and those who do not, to develop a profile of high-risk individuals. This should directly improve mesothelioma treatment and survival, by accelerating diagnosis and intervention.

With these five new grants, MARF has now awarded over one million dollars for research to improve treatments for mesothelioma. Says Hahn, "This is still just a drop in the bucket compared to the need, and compared to the millions being spent on asbestos litigation and lobbying. But it proves that the momentum is building. With the help of the government, industry, and trial lawyers and their clients, we will someday stop this disease."

For more information, including complete descriptions of the research grants, visit http://www.marf.org or contact The Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation, 805-560-8942, c-hahn@marf.org.

For more information, or to contact Mesothelioma Applied Research Foundation, see their website at: www.marf.org