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Bill Thach has had 9 lines of treatment, over 1,000 doses of chemo, and more scans than an airport. He runs ultramarathons for fun. He jokes about being his own Porta Potty. He became a father, then got cancer while his daughter was 5 months old. Today she is 8. He hides the worst of it so she can believe he stands strong, even when he knows that hiding has a cost.We talk about the illusion of strength, what it means to look fine when your body is falling apart, and how a random postcard in an MD Anderson waiting room led him to Man Up to Cancer, where he now leads Diversity and AYA Engagement. Fatherhood. Rage. Sex. Denial. Humor. Survival. All that and why the words good morning can act like a lifeline.RELATED LINKSFight Colorectal CancerCURE TodayINCA AllianceMan Up to CancerWeeViewsYouTubeLinkedInFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
In today's episode, Neil Iyengar, MD, moderated an OncLive Insights discussion about adverse effect management when using breast cancer therapies targeting the PI3K, AKT, and mTOR pathways. Dr Iyengar is an associate professor in the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology and co-director of Breast Medical Oncology in the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology at Emory University School of Medicine; as well as director of Survivorship Services at the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He was joined by Heather Moore, CPP, PharmD, a clinical pharmacist practitioner at the Duke Cancer Center Breast Clinic in Durham, North Carolina; and Sarah Donahue, MPH, NP, a nurse practitioner at the University of California San Francisco Health. In our exclusive discussion, the experts highlighted the importance of early and comprehensive testing (using both tissue and liquid biopsies) for genetic alterations to guide treatment decisions. They also noted strategies for managing diarrhea, including patient education on diet, proactive use of loperamide, and regular monitoring. They also explained that hyperglycemia management should hinge on prophylactic use of metformin or SGLT2 inhibitors, dietary restrictions, and frequent glucose monitoring. Their conversation on rash management included insights about prophylactic antihistamines, patient education on skin care, and involving dermatology for severe cases. Overall, the experts spotlighted the importance of multidisciplinary collaboration and proactive patient education when treating patients with breast cancer.
In this week's episode, Blood Associate editor Dr. Hervé Dombret interviews authors Drs. Sarah K. Tasian and David T. Teachey on their contributions to the How I Treat Series on acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Dr. Tasian's paper, “How I treat Philadelphia chromosome-like acute lymphoblastic leukemia in children, adolescents, and young adults” discusses the different classes of Ph-like ALL and reviews the recent trials investigating TKIs and immunotherapy specifically for this high-risk patient population. Dr. Teachey's paper, “How I treat ETP-ALL in children”, discusses the best current and emerging therapies that may be used in patients with ETP ALL, including nelarabine and other new agents, immunotherapy, and allogeneic HSCT.See the full How I Treat series in volume 145 issue 1 of Blood.
Shannon Burkett has lived about six lives. Broadway actor. SNL alum. Nurse. Filmmaker. Advocate. Cancer survivor. And the kind of person who makes you question what you've done with your day. She wrote and produced My Vagina—the stop-motion musical kind, not the cry-for-help kind—and built a global movement after her son was poisoned by lead dust in their New York apartment. Out of that came LEAD: How This Story Ends Is Up to Us, a documentary born from rage, science, and maternal defiance. We talked about everything from The Goonies to Patrick Stewart to the quiet rage of parenting in a country that treats public health like a hobby. This episode is about art, anger, resilience, and what happens when an unstoppable theater nerd turned science geek Jersey girl collides with an immovable healthcare system.RELATED LINKSShannon Burkett Official SiteLEAD: How This Story Ends Is Up to UsEnd Lead PoisoningLinkedIn: Shannon BurkettBroadwayWorld ProfileFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Listen to JCO's Art of Oncology article, "A Chance to Heal with Cold Hard Steel" by Dr. Taylor Goodstein, who is a fellow at Emory University. The article is followed by an interview with Goodstein and host Dr. Mikkael Sekeres. Dr. Goodstein shares a story about surgery, grief, and being courageous in the face of one's own fallibility. TRANSCRIPT Narrator: A Chance to Heal with Cold Hard Steel, Taylor Goodstein, MD Mikkael Sekeres: Welcome back to JCO's Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology. This ASCO podcast features intimate narratives and perspectives from authors exploring their experiences in oncology. I am your host, Mikkael Sekeres. I am Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Hematology at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami. Joining us today is Dr. Taylor Goodstein, urologic oncology fellow at Emory University and our first Narrative Medicine Contest winner, to discuss her Journal of Clinical Oncology article, "A Chance to Heal with Cold Hard Steel." Dr. Goodstein and I have agreed to address each other by first names. Taylor, thank you for contributing to the Journal of Clinical Oncology, to our contest, and for joining us to discuss your winning article. Taylor Goodstein: Thank you so much for having me. This is a great honor. Mikkael Sekeres: The honor was ours, actually. We had, if you haven't heard, a very competitive contest. We had a total of 159 entries. We went through a couple of iterations of evaluating every entry to make it to our top five, and then you were the winner. So thank you so much for contributing this outstanding essay both to our Art of Oncology Narrative Medicine Contest and also ultimately to JCO. Taylor Goodstein: Oh, thank you so much. Mikkael Sekeres: So, I was wondering if we could start by asking you to tell us something about yourself. Where are you from, and walk us through your career and how you made it to this point? Taylor Goodstein: Well, I grew up in a small town in Colorado - Glenwood Springs, Colorado. It is on the Western Slope, about 45 minutes north of Aspen. I went all the way to the east coast for college, where I ended up minoring in creative writing. So writing has been a part of my medical journey kind of throughout. I went to medical school back in Colorado at University of Colorado in Aurora, and then I did my residency training at he Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. And now I am at Emory University for fellowship. And I have been kind of writing all throughout, trying to make sense of the various journeys we go on throughout the experiences we have with going through our medical training. Mikkael Sekeres: That is amazing, and I noticed how you emphasized the "The" in Ohio State University. Taylor Goodstein: Yes, we fought hard for that "The." Mikkael Sekeres: Right, as do we at The University of Miami. Yes. What drew you to surgery, and specifically surgical oncology? Taylor Goodstein: My dad is a surgeon. My dad is an ear, nose, and throat doctor. And I am essentially him. We are the same person, and it made him very, very happy. So when I was looking at different medical specialties, I knew I was going to do a surgical subspecialty, and that is what I was drawn to. And then I was looking for the one that felt right, ended up finding urology, and then throughout my residency journey, I really gravitated towards cancer care. I really loved the patient population taking care of cancer patients, and surgically it felt like a way that I was going to be engaged and challenged throughout my career as there is so much that is always changing in oncology, almost too fast to keep up with all of it. But that is what really, ultimately, drew me to that career path. Mikkael Sekeres: It is great that you had a role model in your dad as well to bring you into this field. Taylor Goodstein: Well, he is very disappointed that I did urology rather than ENT, and he's in private and I am going into academics, so there is plenty of room for disappointment. Mikkael Sekeres: I am sure the last thing in the world he is is disappointed in you. And I will say, so I am able to see your background here, our listeners of course are listening to a podcast and they are not. You have a very impressive bookshelf with a lot of different types of books on it. Taylor Goodstein: This is your guys' background! This was the option of one of the backgrounds I could choose for coming onto this. I didn't want to do my real background because I have a cat who is wandering around and was going to be very distracting. Mikkael Sekeres: That's funny! Taylor Goodstein: But I did like the books. The books felt like a good option for me. I do have a big bookshelf; books are very important to me. I don't do anything on Kindle. I like the paper and stuff like that, so I do have a big bookshelf. Mikkael Sekeres: There is something rewarding in the tactile feel of actually turning a page of a book. You did writing from a very early stage as well. I was an English minor undergrad and then focused on creative writing as well and continued taking creative writing courses in medical school. Were you able to continue that during medical school and then in your training? Taylor Goodstein: Yeah, I thought that is what I was going to do when I first went to college. Like, I thought I was going to be a journalist or writer of some kind, and then I think maybe the crisis of job security hit me a little bit, and then also my desire to work with my hands and work with people. I wanted something to write about, something about my life that would be very interesting to write about, and that sort of led me initially to medicine. But then yes, to answer your question, I have been participating in a lot of writing competitions, like through the AUA, the American Urological Association, they do one every year that I have been doing in residency. And then in medical school we had some electives that involved writing and medical literature that we did. There was a collection of student writings, a book that got published during my last year of medical school that I had a couple of essays in. And the journey changes over time. When you are a medical student, you are on this grand journey and you are so excited to be there, but at the same time you feel so incredibly unprepared and useless in a lot of ways. You are just this medical student. The whole medical machinery is this well-oiled cog rotating together, and you are just this wild little- by yourself just trying to fit in. And that experience really resonated with me. And then residency has its own things that you are trying to make sense of. I think it all pales in comparison to what it is like to be a new surgeon for the first time, taking not necessarily your first big case but early in your career and having complications and making difficult decisions. I think is one of the hardest things that we probably have to deal with. Mikkael Sekeres: Well, you write about this in an absolutely riveting way. When you and your attending, you are a fellow on this case with your attending, realize that in the mess of this aggressive tumor that you are trying to resect, you have removed the patient's external iliac artery and vein, you write, and I am going to quote you now to you, which is always a little awkward, but I am going to do it anyway: "It is hard to explain what it feels like. Belly drops, hands shake, lungs slow down, and heart speeds up. It takes several seconds, marked out by the beeping metronome of the patient's own heartbeat, but eventually we return to our bodies, ready to face the error we cannot undo." As a reader, you are transported with you into that moment when, oh my God, you realize what did we do in this tremendous tumor resection you were undertaking? What was going through your mind at that moment? Taylor Goodstein: This is going to sound maybe a little bit funny, but I always think about this line from Frozen 2. I don't know if you have any kids or you have seen Frozen 2. Mikkael Sekeres: I have kids, and I have seen Frozen, but I have to admit I have not seen Frozen 2, and that is obviously lacking in my library of experiences. Taylor Goodstein: Frozen 2 is incredible, way better than Frozen 1. The adult themes in Frozen 2 go above and beyond anything in Frozen 1. But they are faced with some really big challenges and one of the themes that happens in that movie is all you can do is the next right thing. And it gets said several times. I remember connecting to that when I saw the movie, and I have said it to myself so many times in the OR since. You can't go backwards, you can't change what just happened. So all you can do is the next right thing. And so I think once the shock of what had happened kind of fades, all I am thinking in my head is like, "Okay, what is the next right thing to do here?" And obviously that was calling the vascular surgeon, and thankfully he was there and able to come in and do what needed to be done to restore flow to the patient's leg. Mikkael Sekeres: It is so interesting how we are able to compartmentalize in the moment our emotions. The way you write about this and the way you express yourself in this essay, you are horrified by what has happened. This is a terrible thing, yet you are able to separate yourself from that and move forward and just do the right thing for the patient at that time and get your patient out of this and yourself out of this situation. Taylor Goodstein: I think that is honestly, and maybe not for everybody, but for me that has been one of the challenges of becoming a surgeon is learning that level of emotional control, because all you want to do is cry and scream and pull your hair out and hit your fists against the table, but you can't do that. You have to remain in charge of that ship and keep things moving forward. And it is one of those hidden skills that you have to learn when you are going to be a surgeon that you don't get taught in medical school, and you kind of learn on the job in residency, but there is not as much explicit training that goes into that level of emotional control that you have to have. And I have kind of gone on my own self-journey to get there that has been very deliberate for me. Mikkael Sekeres: That is amazing. Do you think as we progress through our careers, and I don't want to use a term that is so dismissive, but maybe I will try it anyway, that we become more nonchalant about surgeries or writing for chemotherapy or radiation therapy to deal with cancer, or is that fear, that notion of "with great power comes great responsibility," to loosely quote Spider-Man, is that always there? Do we always pause before we start the surgery, write for the chemotherapy, or write for the radiation therapy and say, "Wait a second, what am I doing here?" Taylor Goodstein: I think it is always there, and I would argue that it even grows as you get farther along in your practice and you gain this collection of experiences that you have as a surgeon where you develop complications and from that you change your practice, you change the way you operate, the way you consider certain operative characteristics. I would argue that, as time goes on, you probably get more cautious approaching surgery for patients, more cautious considering the side effects of different treatment options that people have. Mikkael Sekeres: I think that is right. There is danger in reflecting on the anecdotes of your career experience to guide future treatments, but there is also some value to remembering those times when something went wrong or when it almost went wrong and why we have to check ourselves before doing what may become routine at one point in our careers, and that routineness may be doing a surgery or writing for chemotherapy, but always remembering that there is great danger in what we are about to embark on. Taylor Goodstein: Always, yeah. Mikkael Sekeres: Taylor, what makes this story really special and one of the reasons it won our Art of Oncology Narrative Medicine Contest is just how deep you plunged into reflecting on this surgery. And you write, I am going to quote you to you again, you reflect on how people may criticize you and your attending for embarking on this surgery, but you say: "They never met him, not like you did. They did not see him buckled over in pain, desperation in his eyes. They did not hand his wife tissues or look at photos of his pregnant daughter or hear about his dream of making it to Italy one day. They did not hug his family at the end of it all and cry together as he rattled out sharp breaths. And they certainly did not know how much it meant to get two months free of pain and just enough time to meet his granddaughter." There is a hard truth you write it just perfectly, there is a hard truth to why we don't always follow CMS guidelines for not offering treatment at the end of life, isn't there? Taylor Goodstein: Yeah, it is tough. And you know, I think a lot about this because I have heard a few times to be cautious of the armchair quarterbacks, specifically when you are talking about M&Ms. It is so easy to come in at the other side of a bad outcome and talk about how you shouldn't have done this, you shouldn't have done that. And to be fair, during the M&M in question, as I think back to it, the feedback for the most part was very constructive and ways to maybe be more prepared coming into a surgery like this. Like, there were questions about whether - here at Emory, we operate over various different hospitals - of whether the hospital, it should have been done at an even different hospital was like one of the questions, that maybe had more resources. So things like that, but it is hard I think when you get that question like, maybe you shouldn't have operated. And there is- I think one of the lessons I learned here is being unresectable doesn't mean you can't resect the tumor. We say the word 'unresectable', like we obviously we resected it, but what was the cost of that, obviously? Like we can resect a lot of things, but how much collateral gets damaged in the process of doing that? However, it is a very challenging question. I mean, this guy had one option really. I mean, chemo wasn't going to work, radiation wasn't going to work, and his goals were different than our goals are necessarily when we talk about cancer care. He wanted to be free of pain, he wanted to be able to go home. He was admitted to the hospital, he was on an IV, like Dilaudid, like he could not get off of a PCA because of how much pain he was in. And he just wanted to go home and be there for the birth of his granddaughter, and that is what we tried to do for him. In which case we were successful, but in everything else, we were not. Mikkael Sekeres: And you were successful. I could imagine that when people are in pain, their immediate goal of course is to get rid of the pain. Being in pain is an awful place to be. But with the impending birth of his granddaughter, I have to imagine you realign what your goals are, and that must have been primary for him, and you got him there. Taylor Goodstein: We did. I also talked a little bit about this later on, this idea of providing peace for families. I think that there is this sense of maybe peace and acceptance that comes from having tried to do the long shot surgery, that if you had never tried, if you come to them right away and you say, "Oh, this is- I can guarantee that this isn't ultimately going to end up well," there is still like that what's going to linger in the back of their mind if it never gets attempted versus, okay, we tried, it failed, and now we can come with this almost like satisfaction or comfort knowing that we did everything we could. So I guess I think a little bit about that as well. Mikkael Sekeres: Well, I think that is a beautiful place to end this as well. There are so many factors we have to consider when we embark on this cancer journey with our patients and when we make recommendations for treatment, and it sounds like, and it is so beautifully reflected in your essay that you thought extremely holistically about this patient and what his goals were and appreciated that those goals had to be severely modified once he had his cancer diagnosis. Taylor Goodstein: I think the most important sentence is, "I still don't know what the right answer is." And I think that is important for me to end on. Mikkael Sekeres: Well, and you are still in training. I think it is so important to acknowledge that. When you are training, it is important to acknowledge it when you are at my stage of my career as well. There are still encounters where I come out and I think to myself, I am just still not 100 percent sure what the right thing to do is. But often we let our patients guide us, and we let their goals guide us, and then we know that at least it is right for that person. Taylor Goodstein: Yeah, exactly. Mikkael Sekeres: Well, it has been such a pleasure to have Dr. Taylor Goodstein, who is a fellow at Emory University, to discuss her outstanding essay, "A Chance to Heal with Cold Hard Steel." Taylor, thank you so much for submitting your entry to our first Art of Oncology Narrative Medicine Contest, for winning it, and for joining us today. Taylor Goodstein: Thank you so much for having me. Mikkael Sekeres: If you have enjoyed this episode, consider sharing it with a friend or colleague, or leave us a review. Your feedback and support help us continue to have these important conversations. If you are looking for more episodes and context, follow our show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and explore more from ASCO at asco.org/podcasts. Until next time, this has been Mikkael Sekeres for JCO Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology. The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Show Notes: Like, share and subscribe so you never miss an episode and leave a rating or review. Guest Bio: Dr Taylor Goodstein is a Fellow at Emory University.
As we begin new year, here is your reminder: Survivorship is active, not passive. What began as a friendship grew into a shared mission—to care for, educate, and advocate for those facing breast cancer. Thanks Friendship Podcast for inviting us for this empowering conversation. In this episode, Dr. Shabana Dewani and I talk honestly about breast cancer from both sides of the table—as physicians and as humans who walk closely with survivors every day. We are both passionate about: movement and strength training- which rebuilds muscle lost during treatment, improves bone density and reduces fracture risk, lowers fatigue, improves energy, supports metabolic health and reduces risk of recurrence.We discuss prevention, recovery, survivorship, and the often unspoken emotional journey that continues long after treatment ends.This isn't just about medicine.It's about connection, trust, hope, and walking alongside patients with compassion and purpose. We are both grateful to have conversations that elevate awareness and strengthen our community.Dr. Shabana Dewani is board certified in Medical Oncology, Hematology, and Internal Medicine—and a joy to listen to! She breaks down the oncology process and important factors when deciding treatment. You'll be able to hear her passion for helping others ensuring they get the best treatment possible.Stay Connected with Dr. Deepa Halaharvi:TikTok: @breastdoctorInstagram: @drdhalaharviTBCP Instagram: @thebreastcancerpodcastWebsite: https://drdeepahalaharvi.com/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@deepahalaharvi5917Instagram: @thebreastcancerpodcast
BloodCancerTalks: ASH 2025 Lymphoma RoundupGuest: Dr. Carla Casulo, Associate Professor, Wilmot Cancer Centre, University of RochesterAbstracts DiscussedFollicular LymphomaEPCORE-FL1 (Falchi) - Epcoritamab plus lenalidomide-rituximab (R2) in relapsed/refractory FLTheme: Bispecific antibody combinations in R/R FL; comparing to other approaches Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma (DLBCL) - Elderly/Unfit PatientsMorningSun (Sharman) - Mosunetuzumab monotherapy in patients ≥80 years or chemo-ineligibleEPCOR-DLBCL-3 (Vitolo) - Epcoritamab monotherapy in elderly patientsR-Pola-Glo - Rituximab-polatuzumab-glofitamab combination in older/frail patientsTheme: Single-agent and combination bispecific strategies for elderly and frail DLBCL patients DLBCL - First-Line TreatmentSMART STOP (Westin) - Chemotherapy-free approach using lenalidomide, tafasitamab, rituximab, acalabrutinib (ULTRA regimen)FrontMIND - Tafasitamab-lenalidomide added to R-CHOPTheme: Chemotherapy-sparing and chemo-intensification strategies in newly diagnosed DLBCL DLBCL - Relapsed/RefractoryDALY 2-EU (Borchmann) - Dual CD19/CD20 CAR-T (zamto-cel) versus R-GemOx in transplant-ineligible patientsTheme: Expanding CAR-T eligibility; treatment selection in transplant-ineligible R/R DLBCL Hodgkin LymphomaSWOG 1826 - 3-year update: Nivolumab-AVD versus brentuximab-AVDHD21 - 5-year update: PET-adapted BrECADD versus BEACOPPTheme: Long-term outcomes and treatment selection in newly diagnosed Hodgkin lymphoma Burkitt LymphomaZUMA-25 (Van Dorp) - Brexucabtagene autoleucel (Brexu-cel) in relapsed/refractory BurkittTheme: CAR-T therapy for the challenging population of R/R Burkitt lymphoma Mantle Cell Lymphoma - First-Line TrAVeRse - Acalabrutinib, venetoclax, rituximabGLOVe - Glofitamab, lenalidomide, venetoclax (high-risk MCL)BOVen - Zanubrutinib, obinutuzumab, venetoclax (older patients)MAVO - Acalabrutinib, venetoclax, obinutuzumabWindow-3 - Acalabrutinib-rituximab followed by brexu-cel (high-risk MCL)Theme: Chemotherapy-free combinations in newly diagnosed mantle cell lymphoma
In this week's episode, Blood Associate Editor, Dr. Jason Gotlib leads a discussion about the How I Treat Series commemorating the 25th anniversary of the introduction of tyrosine kinase inhibitors in CML, featuring Drs. Neil Shah, Simona Soverini, Elisabetta Abruzzese, and Yves Chalandon. The introduction of TKIs revolutionized patient outcomes in CML, turning a poor prognosis—3 to 5 years life expectancy—to a manageable chronic condition. In this conversation, we'll cover management techniques for CML during relapse, pregnancy, and explore indications for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. See the full How I Treat series in Volume 147 issue 4 of Blood.
Iaaaago Jorge convida Raphael Barreto e Lucas Brandão para discutir sobre neutropenia febril, em 5 clinicagens:1. Neutropenia febril é emergência oncológica2. Como escolher o antibiótico?3. Quando escalonar o antibiótico?4. Quando suspender o antibiótico?5. Quando prescrever filgrastim?Referências:1. Klastersky J, de Naurois J, Rolston K, et al. Management of febrile neutropaenia: ESMO Clinical Practice Guidelines. Ann Oncol. 2016;27(suppl 5):v111-v118. doi:10.1093/annonc/mdw3252. Taplitz RA, Kennedy EB, Bow EJ, et al. Outpatient Management of Fever and Neutropenia in Adults Treated for Malignancy: American Society of Clinical Oncology and Infectious Diseases Society of America Clinical Practice Guideline Update. J Clin Oncol. 2018;36(14):1443-1453. doi:10.1200/JCO.2017.77.62113. Zhang H, Wu Y, Lin Z, et al. Naproxen for the treatment of neoplastic fever: A PRISMA-compliant systematic review and meta-analysis. Medicine (Baltimore). 2019;98(22):e15840. doi:10.1097/MD.00000000000158404. Zheng B, Huang Z, Huang Y, Hong L, Li J, Wu J. Predictive value of monocytes and lymphocytes for short-term neutrophil changes in chemotherapy-induced severe neutropenia in solid tumors. Support Care Cancer. 2020;28(3):1289-1294. doi:10.1007/s00520-019-04946-35. Douglas C, Morse JD, Anderson BJ. Mucositis Pain and Its Temporal Relationship to White Cell Count. Paediatr Anaesth. 2025;35(4):302-309. doi:10.1111/pan.150636. Vassallo M, Michelangeli C, Fabre R, et al. Procalcitonin and C-Reactive Protein/Procalcitonin Ratio as Markers of Infection in Patients With Solid Tumors. Front Med (Lausanne). 2021;8:627967. Published 2021 Mar 12. doi:10.3389/fmed.2021.6279677. Smith TJ, Bohlke K, Lyman GH, et al. Recommendations for the Use of WBC Growth Factors: American Society of Clinical Oncology Clinical Practice Guideline Update. J Clin Oncol. 2015;33(28):3199-3212. doi:10.1200/JCO.2015.62.34888. Heil G, Hoelzer D, Sanz MA, et al. A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase III study of filgrastim in remission induction and consolidation therapy for adults with de novo acute myeloid leukemia. The International Acute Myeloid Leukemia Study Group. Blood. 1997;90(12):4710-4718.9. Weiss JM, Csoszi T, Maglakelidze M, et al. Myelopreservation with the CDK4/6 inhibitor trilaciclib in patients with small-cell lung cancer receiving first-line chemotherapy: a phase Ib/randomized phase II trial. Ann Oncol. 2019;30(10):1613-1621. doi:10.1093/annonc/mdz27810. Bodey GP, Buckley M, Sathe YS, Freireich EJ. Quantitative relationships between circulating leukocytes and infection in patients with acute leukemia. Ann Intern Med. 1966;64(2):328-340. doi:10.7326/0003-4819-64-2-32811. Nucci M, Arrais-Rodrigues C, Bergamasco MD, et al. Management of febrile neutropenia: consensus of the Brazilian Association of Hematology, Blood Transfusion and Cell Therapy - ABHH. Hematol Transfus Cell Ther. 2024;46 Suppl 6(Suppl 6):S346-S361. doi:10.1016/j.htct.2024.11.11912. Guarana M, Nucci M, Nouér SA. Shock and Early Death in Hematologic Patients with Febrile Neutropenia. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2019;63(11):e01250-19. Published 2019 Oct 22. doi:10.1128/AAC.01250-1913. Rosa RG, Goldani LZ. Cohort study of the impact of time to antibiotic administration on mortality in patients with febrile neutropenia. Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 2014;58(7):3799-3803. doi:10.1128/AAC.02561-1414. Averbuch D, Orasch C, Cordonnier C, et al. European guidelines for empirical antibacterial therapy for febrile neutropenic patients in the era of growing resistance: summary of the 2011 4th European Conference on Infections in Leukemia. Haematologica. 2013;98(12):1826-1835. doi:10.3324/haematol.2013.09102515. Beyar-Katz O, Dickstein Y, Borok S, Vidal L, Leibovici L, Paul M. Empirical antibiotics targeting gram-positive bacteria for the treatment of febrile neutropenic patients with cancer. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2017;6(6):CD003914. Published 2017 Jun 3. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD003914.pub416. Puerta-Alcalde P, Cardozo C, Suárez-Lledó M, et al. Current time-to-positivity of blood cultures in febrile neutropenia: a tool to be used in stewardship de-escalation strategies. Clin Microbiol Infect. 2019;25(4):447-453. doi:10.1016/j.cmi.2018.07.02617. Ljungman P, Alain S, Chemaly RF, et al. Recommendations from the 10th European Conference on Infections in Leukaemia for the management of cytomegalovirus in patients after allogeneic haematopoietic cell transplantation and other T-cell-engaging therapies. Lancet Infect Dis. 2025;25(8):e451-e462. doi:10.1016/S1473-3099(25)00069-618. Maertens J, Lodewyck T, Donnelly JP, et al. Empiric vs Preemptive Antifungal Strategy in High-Risk Neutropenic Patients on Fluconazole Prophylaxis: A Randomized Trial of the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer. Clin Infect Dis. 2023;76(4):674-682. doi:10.1093/cid/ciac62319. Aguilar-Guisado M, Espigado I, Martín-Peña A, et al. Optimisation of empirical antimicrobial therapy in patients with haematological malignancies and febrile neutropenia (How Long study): an open-label, randomised, controlled phase 4 trial. Lancet Haematol. 2017;4(12):e573-e583. doi:10.1016/S2352-3026(17)30211-9
Michael Kramer was 19 when cancer ambushed his life. He went from surfing Florida beaches to chemo, radiation, and a bone marrow transplant that left him alive but carrying a chronic disease. He had necrosis in his knees and elbows, lost his ability to surf for years, and found himself stuck in hospitals instead of the ocean. Yet he adapted. Michael picked up a guitar, built Lego sets, led support groups, and started sharing his story on Instagram and TikTok.We talk about masculinity, identity, and what happens when the thing that defines you gets stripped away. He opens up about dating in Miami, freezing sperm at a children's hospital, awkward Uber-for-sperm moments with his brother, and how meditation became survival. Michael lost his father to cancer when he was a teen, and that grief shaped how he lives and advocates today. He is funny, grounded, and honest about the realities of survivorship in your twenties. This episode shows what resilience looks like when you refuse to walk it off and choose to speak it out loud instead.RELATED LINKSMichael Kramer on InstagramMichael Kramer on TikTokMichael and Mom Inspire on YouTubeAshlee Cramer's BookUniversity of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer CenterStupid Cancer FEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Walk It Off on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship inquiries, email podcast@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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In today's episode, we had the pleasure of speaking with Rahul Banerjee, MD, FACP, about the ongoing investigation of CELMoDs for multiple myeloma. Dr Banerjee is an assistant professor in the Clinical Research Division of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, as well as an assistant professor in the Division of Hematology and Oncology at the University of Washington in Seattle. In our exclusive interview, Dr Banerjee discussed the potential of CELMoDs for multiple myeloma management, highlighting their superior efficacy and safety compared with traditional immunomodulatory drugs (IMiDs) like lenalidomide (Revlimid) and pomalidomide (Pomalyst). He also noted strong preclinical and clinical data with CELMoDs, as well as their favorable safety profiles that include fewer immune and hematopoietic effects. Additionally, he explained that early data suggest that CELMoDs could replace traditional IMiDs, offering better long-term outcomes and fewer adverse effects.
In this week's episode, Blood Associate editor Dr. Thomas Ortel interviews authors Drs. Ware Branch and J.J. Strouse on their contributions to How I Treat hematologic complications in pregnancy. Dr. Branch's paper, “How I diagnose and treat antiphospholipid syndrome in pregnancy” discusses the evolving clinical and laboratory features of APS, and the treatment of cases meeting ACR/EULAR classification criteria. Dr. Strouse stresses the unique problems posed to both the mother and fetus during pregnancy in his paper "How I treat sickle cell disease in pregnancy”.See the full How I Treat series in volume 143 issue 9 of Blood journal.
Daniel Garza had momentum. Acting roles, directing gigs, national tours lined up. Then anal cancer stopped everything. Radiation wrecked his body, stripped him of control, and left him in diapers, staring down despair. His partner, Christian Ramirez, carried him through the darkest nights, changed his wounds, fought hospitals, and paid the price with his own health. Christian still lives with permanent damage from caregiving, but he stayed anyway.Together they talk with me about masculinity, sex, shame, friendship, and survival. They describe the friendships that vanished, the laughter that kept them alive, and the brutal reality of caregiving no one prepares you for. We get into survivor guilt, PTSD, and why even rocks need rocks. Daniel is now an actor, director, and comedian living with HIV. Christian continues to tell the unfiltered truth about what it takes to be a caregiver and stay whole. This episode gives voice to both sides of the cancer experience, the survivor and the one who stands guard. RELATED LINKSDaniel Garza IMDbDaniel Garza on InstagramDaniel Garza on FacebookChristian Ramirez on LinkedInLilmesican Productions Inc (Daniel & Christian)Stupid Cancer FEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Walk It Off on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship inquiries, email podcast@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Better Edge : A Northwestern Medicine podcast for physicians
In this episode of Parts and Labor, Angela Chaudhari, MD, hosts a panel of experts from Northwestern Medicine's Division of Gynecologic Oncology to discuss the groundbreaking research and clinical trials shaping the future of gynecologic cancer care. The panel explores innovations in immunotherapy, investigator-initiated trials, survivorship and symptom science, while highlighting efforts to expand access and diversity in clinical research across Chicago and the surrounding suburbs.This episode's panel of guests includes:• Emma L. Barber, MD, John and Ruth Brewer Professor of Gynecology and Cancer Research, Division Chief of Gynecologic Oncology and Director of Robotic Surgery• Daniela E. Matei, MD, Diana, Princess of Wales Professor of Cancer Research and Chief of Reproductive Science in the Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Hematology and Oncology• Dario R. Roque, MD, Associate Professor of Gynecologic Oncology and Fellowship Program Director• Emily M. Hinchcliff, MD, Assistant Professor of Gynecologic Oncology and Program Director of the OB-GYN Residency Program
Listen to JCO's Art of Oncology article, "The Quiet Work of Clarity" by Dr. Henry Bair, who is an ophthalmology resident physician at Wills Eye Hospital. The article is followed by an interview with Bair and host Dr. Mikkael Sekeres. Dr. Bair explores how vision care can honor end-of-life goals and helps a patient with failing sight write to his children. TRANSCRIPT Narrator: The Quiet Work of Clarity, Henry, Bair, MD Mikkael Sekeres: Welcome back to JCO's Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology. This ASCO podcast features intimate narratives and perspectives from authors exploring their experiences in oncology. I'm your host, Mikkael Sekeres. I'm professor of medicine and Chief of the Division of Hematology at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami. What a pleasure it is to have joining us today Dr. Henry Bair, an ophthalmology resident physician at Wills Eye Hospital, to discuss his Journal of Clinical Oncology Art of Oncology article, "Quiet Work of Clarity". At the time of this recording, our guest has no disclosures. Dr. Bair and I have agreed to call each other by first names. Henry, thank you for contributing to the Journal of Clinical Oncology and for joining us to discuss your article. Henry Bair: Thank you very much for having me. Mikkael Sekeres: I love starting off by getting a little bit of background about our guests. I know a little bit about you, but I'm not sure all of our listeners do. Can you tell us about yourself and how you reached this stage of your training? Henry Bair: Sure thing. Happy to start there. I was born and raised in Taiwan. I came to the United States when I was 18 for college. I was at Rice University. I was drawn to it because the Texas Medical Center was right over there, but the university had a small liberal arts feel and the university did not box me into any specific discipline. I went there and we didn't have to declare anything and we could take any class from any school over there. And I actually fell in love with medieval studies of all things. I just came upon it in one of the survey courses and I went deeper and deeper and deeper and eventually wrote my thesis on medieval Irish manuscripts. That was really interesting. At the same time I was doing some clinical work and I realized that medicine might be a way to combine my interest in storytelling and the humanities with making a tangible difference in people's lives. Then I was in medical school at Stanford University, which was, in a similar way, I found a place that really let me explore what it meant to be a physician because the medical school let me take classes from all across the university: so the law school, the school of humanities, school of engineering, the business school. I got a chance to do a little bit of a lot of different things to try to figure out what I actually wanted to do with life. And I spent a lot of time actually doing a little bit of palliative care, a little bit of oncology, some medical education, some medical humanities. I had a lot of time thinking about, "Okay, what kind of specialty do I want to do?" I found myself really enjoying procedural specialties, but also really liking the kinds of patient interactions and conversations I had in palliative care and oncology, and eventually found ophthalmology, interestingly. I often have to remind myself or explain myself how those two connect. And to me, the way they connect is that ophthalmology lets me do very fascinating, intellectually challenging things in terms of working with my hands, very rewarding surgical procedural work. But at the same time, the conversations that I get to have with patients about seeing well, I saw so many parallels between that and living well. To me it was so much about quality of life. And that's how I knew that ophthalmology was the right move for me. And so now I'm an ophthalmology resident. Mikkael Sekeres: Fascinating. When I was an undergrad, the person who had the most influence on me was an English professor who was also a medievalist. There must be something about the personality and pouring over these old texts and trying to read things in Middle English that appeals to some character trait in those of us who eventually become physicians. I also remember when I was in medical school, we could also take classes throughout the university. So I wound up taking some writing classes with undergrads and with graduate students. It adds to this holistic education that we bring to medicine because it's not all about the science, is it? Henry Bair: Yeah, it's also different ways of thinking and seeing the world and just hearing people's different stories. It's the people I've met in a lot of those different settings outside of medical school that I think really enhanced my formative years in medical education. Mikkael Sekeres: You certainly bring it all together in this essay, which was just lovely. And I wonder if we could dive into some of the aspects of this essay. I'm dying to know, when you went to see this man, the main character of your essay, did you have any idea what the consult would be about? Henry Bair: No. So when we're in the hospital and as the ophthalmology resident on consult, we get notifications. These pop up whenever a primary team puts in a consult and it's usually fairly vague. It's usually no more than "blurry vision, please evaluate," "eye pain, please evaluate." As an ophthalmologist, getting a consult for blurry vision is kind of like a cardiologist getting consulted for chest pain. You're like, "Okay, but it could be something, it could be nothing, it could be something terrifying, it could be dry eyes, or it could be end-stage glaucoma, or it could be, who knows?" You really genuinely never know what you're getting yourself into until you actually go in there and talk to the patient, which can be frustrating, but also kind of an interesting experience. Mikkael Sekeres: I worry I'm guilty of submitting some of those consults to ophthalmology. Henry Bair: I didn't realize this fully until I started working on the ophthalmology side. I think non-ophthalmologists get so little exposure and training in ophthalmology. Of course, when I think about it, I didn't get any ophthalmology in medical school. So it's understandable. Mikkael Sekeres: In your essay, you write, and I'm going to quote you to you, "I am still learning what we can treat and what we can only tend. My training has taught me well how to assess visual acuity, intraocular pressures, and retinal nerve fiber layer thickness, but standing at his bedside, the index that mattered was none of these, but whether we could help him read for one more day." "What we can treat and what we can only tend." That's such a beautiful line. Is that something that only comes with years of experience, determining what we can treat and what we can only tend, or is it a dawning sense as we get to know our patients when we are trying to stop the inevitable from happening? Henry Bair: That is an interesting question because I think of it more almost as a fundamental shift in mindset. And I'm coming from someone who I think had the benefit of having had mentors, having had clinical experiences in palliative care in medical school. As I mentioned earlier, I was drawn to a lot of those patient conversations. So I think in some ways, starting in residency, I had long been primed to think about tending to a patient's concerns. And yet, even having been primed, even having the benefit of all those experiences and those conversations with amazing clinicians and with patients, maybe it's subject matter specific. I mean, ophthalmology tends to be a specialty, in my experience, my limited experience, ophthalmology tends to be one of those specialties that focuses so much on fixing things and treating things and reversing things. And in fact, that's one of the beautiful things of ophthalmology: how often you can reverse things or completely stop the progression of disease. And so I think in some ways, I am having to relearn what it means to see something not always as, "Okay, what's a problem here? What is the fix? How do I reverse this?" and go back and reach back to those experiences, those conversations I had with patients about trying to figure out, "Okay, the things that we can't fix, what can we still do?" To most people who have come across palliative care, this sentiment is by no means novel, the sentiment that there is always something we can do. You often hear about people talking about, "Oh, there's nothing more we can do." And I sort of try to bring that approach into the clinical encounters that I have. It's very reflexive to think that, "Okay, a person has lost vision from end-stage glaucoma or they have a blind painful eye. Well, there's nothing more we can do. You know, we've done all the conventional surgeries, we've done all the therapies, the medications," but I always have to pull myself back and say, "But there's always something we can do here." Mikkael Sekeres: It's so interesting how you frame that. We're problem solvers. We're trained to solve problems. A patient presents with X, a problem, we have to be clever enough to figure out how to solve it. I wonder if what you're saying indirectly is sometimes we're identifying the wrong problem. Henry Bair: I think so, yeah. Mikkael Sekeres: There may be a problem that we can't solve. Someone is actively dying from cancer. We can't solve the problem of curing them of their cancer. But there are other problems that we can potentially solve, and maybe that's where we have to be clever in identifying the problem. Henry Bair: I think so. And it's also what's in our textbooks and what's not. So we spend hundreds of hours in lecture and we pour over so many textbooks, and I do question banks now for board exams preparation. It's all on the textbook presentations, the textbook solutions. The problems are, you know, the retinal artery occlusions, it's about the really bad diabetic retinopathy. And then the answers to those things would be a stroke workup, would be some kind of injection into the eye. But like the problem that I encountered in this story that I talked about was this patient trying to write letters to his kids. That's not going to show up on any exam. We don't have lectures about talking about those things. Mikkael Sekeres: So, as I think you know, I wrote an essay in 2010 for Art of Oncology and for a book that I wrote about a woman who inspired me to go into oncology. She was a woman in her 40s who was a pediatric attending who had advanced ovarian cancer. The story I wrote about her was how she spent her final night on this earth in the intensive care unit writing cards for her children, too. It's fascinating how history repeats itself in how we care for people who have cancer. You have a really a beautiful way of saying this. You talk about, "an ordinary father sharing ordinary advice for an ordinary day. Illness had made that ordinariness remarkable. Our work that day was to protect the ordinary." Can you talk a little bit, I mean given the woman I wrote about and the man you wrote about, about this need to communicate with your family after you're gone? Henry Bair: To me, one of the biggest lessons I've learned working in healthcare is that what defines most of our lives, what defines the most meaningful, the most purposeful, the most rewarding aspects of our lives is our relationships. You can explore this from myriad perspectives. You can explore this from like a psychosocial perspective and look at all those studies showing that people who have better social connections and better ties with their families live longer lives and actually healthier lives, have decreased rates of mental health problems. Or we can just approach this from like a more humanistic perspective and explore it and think and listen in on the conversations people have with people around them, that patients have, the conversations patients have during the most difficult times of their lives. They don't talk about their work, they don't talk about their accomplishments, they talk about their relationships with their kids, with their spouses, with their parents. In my experience when people are at critical junctures of big life changes, whether it's people about to go into major surgery, people grappling with the idea of losing their vision or losing their lives, any sort of big pivotal change, they want to talk to their families and explore gratitude and regret and all these things. These are the themes that come up over and over and over again. In some ways it does not surprise me at all, this need to communicate with the family at the end of life. In some ways that's how you live on, that's how we feel, that's how patients feel their lives are defined by is that lasting relationship, that lasting impact at the end, or even transcending the end. Mikkael Sekeres: This is going beyond the end, isn't it? Henry Bair: Yeah. Mikkael Sekeres: These are letters and notes being written to children to be handed to them after death. And I think one of the reasons, in my case, the woman I encountered when I was in training who inspired me to go into oncology, I've been thinking about her for 25 years off and on. Both the incredible spirit to be able to do that on your last night on this earth, but also the flip side to it: there are potential downsides to doing this, aren't there? That, you know, I think about it from the perspective of her kids who at the time were 8 and 10 years old in my case. And I wonder what it was like for them to open up that birthday card when they were 17 or 18. And I wonder if you've kind of wondered the same about your patient and his children. Henry Bair: Yeah, I think when we think about these letter-writing projects, legacy-type projects, I hear about in hospitals around the country, there are teams that try to implement legacy-type things: whether it's doing video messages, whether it's stitching together short documentary film for patients who are in hospice. I feel like I see these things popping up a lot. You raise a very important point, and I actually didn't think about this until I was writing the essay. It's not an unambiguous good because it's the impact is variable, and it's really hard to predict that. How did you grapple with that in your essay? How did you make sense of it all at the end? Mikkael Sekeres: I don't think I did. I don't think I still have, which is why I think I still reflect back 25 years later on this episode and thinking about her children and how they're now, maybe they're still continuing to receive these cards from her and whether that's something they really appreciate and are like, "Boy, this is great, I get a little piece of mom still even now," or do they look at her unsteady hand as she's writing these cards and say, "That's not the mom I want to remember." Henry Bair: Yeah, that's a really good point. In the essay, I talk about that moment when the patient recognizes these are very imperfect letters, imperfectly written. We talked a little bit about that. And the patient makes a point, very wisely. I had suggested, "Oh, what if you want me to correct things?" And he's like, "No, no, no, the mistakes are part of it. It's part of the message. The message is that this was me at a difficult time in my life. I cannot control my hands the way that I used to, but that's still part of me. That makes it more genuine and authentic, mistakes and all built in." He wanted his children to see him for who he fully was in that moment. Mikkael Sekeres: And that was such a poignant part of your essay and probably the one that jumped out at me the most. Like as a dad, you want your kids to see you for who you are, right? You're not a superhero. In this case, this is somebody who was going to succumb to his illness, who did, but he was their dad and wanted them to remember him for all of who he was at that moment. Before I let you go, Henry, because I feel like we could probably talk for hours about this, before we started this podcast, I noticed you had better podcast equipment than I do, and sure enough, you copped to the fact that you do host your own podcast. You want to tell us a little bit about that? Because it touches on so many themes we touched on here in Cancer Stories. Henry Bair: Yeah, well thanks for asking me about that. Yeah, don't mind if I plug a little bit. Yes, so in medical school, this was 2021, around 2022, we were emerging from the COVID pandemic, and one of the things I was seeing around me as a medical student were physicians and nurses leaving the profession in droves. Like, there were so many reports and surveys coming out of the AMA discussing how more than half of all physicians are burned out, a third of physicians can't find meaning in their work anymore. And that was really scary. As a clinical trainee, what was I getting myself into? These weren't just some clinicians somewhere. These were often times- I was hearing these kinds of conversations about losing sight of why they even come in in the first place to work. I was hearing these conversations from professors that I thought were well-accomplished. These were people who had gone to the right residencies, the right fellowships. They had the right publications. These are people who I aspired to be, I suppose, and they were talking about leaving clinical practice. A wonderful mentor of mine who is an oncologist, still an oncologist at Stanford, we started talking about these things. And I asked him, "You seem to love your job." He was a GI oncologist dealing with very, very sick patients day in and day out. I've seen him in clinic. And I asked him, "What's your secret? What keeps you coming back over and over and over again?" And so that led to a conversation. And then we realized, "Wait a second, there are people, a third of physicians losing meaning in their work meant that two thirds of physicians have meaning in their work. Okay, let's talk about that." So we started exploring, we started just asking clinicians who have found true purpose in their work. And then we asked them to share their stories. And that's how the podcast was born. It's called The Doctor's Art, and at this point, we've expanded and we interview nurses and patients and caregivers. We interview philosophers and filmmakers, journalists. We interview ethicists and religious leaders, really anyone who might have some insight about what living well means either from the clinician perspective or from the patient perspective. And guess what? Everyone is going to be either a caregiver or a care recipient at some point in their lives. It's still ongoing and it's ended up being something where we explore very universal themes. Mikkael Sekeres: Well, it sounds great, Henry, and it sounds like a perfect complement to what we're doing here in Cancer Stories. It has been such a pleasure to have Dr. Henry Bair, who is an ophthalmology resident at Wills Eye Hospital, to discuss his essay, "The Quiet Work of Clarity". Henry, thank you so much for submitting your article to the Journal of Clinical Oncology and for joining us today. Henry Bair: Thank you very much, Mikail, for letting me share my insights and my story. It was a wonderful opportunity. Mikkael Sekeres: If you've enjoyed this episode, consider sharing it with a friend or colleague, or leave us a review. Your feedback and support helps us continue to have these important conversations. If you're looking for more episodes and content, follow our show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and explore more from ASCO at asco.org/podcasts. Until next time, this has been Mikkael Sekeres for Cancer Stories. The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Show notes:Like, share and subscribe so you never miss an episode and leave a rating or review. Guest Bio: Dr Henry Bair is a ophthalmology resident physician at Wills Eye Hospital and podcast host of The Doctor's Art.
This week's episode accompanies the Review Series on Marginal Zone Lymphoma published in this week's issue of Blood. Associate editor, Dr. Philippe Armand interviews authors Dr. Juan Pablo Alderuccio and Dr. Ariela Noy on their contribution to this review series titled "The treatment of marginal zone lymphoma". The article is crucial in highlighting the clinically and biologically heterogenous nature of MZL diseases, and how current treatment options and available research do not allow for comprehensive MZL specific therapies. Drs. Alderuccio and Noy share their insights on specific avenues for the expansion of the MZL care landscape. Find the full review series in volume 147 issue 2 of Blood journal.
Trevor Maxwell lived the archetype of masculinity in rural Maine. Big, strong, splitting wood, raising kids, and carrying the load. Then cancer ripped that script apart. In 2018 he was bedridden, emasculated, ashamed, and convinced his family would be better off without him. His wife refused to let him disappear. That moment forced Trevor to face his depression, get help, and rebuild himself. Out of that came Man Up To Cancer, now the largest community for men with cancer, a place where men stop pretending they are bulletproof and start being honest with each other.Eric Charsky joins the conversation. A veteran with five cancers, forty-nine surgeries, and the scars to prove it, Eric lays out what happens when the military's invincible mindset collides with mortality. Together, we talk masculinity, vulnerability, sex, shame, and survival. This episode is blunt, raw, and overdue.RELATED LINKSMan Up To CancerTrevor Maxwell on LinkedInDempsey CenterEric Charsky on LinkedInStupid Cancer FEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Walk It Off on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship inquiries, email podcast@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Behind the Knife ABSITE 2026 – Up-to-date and high yield learning to help you DOMINATE the exam. Don't forget to check out our ABSITE Podcast Companion Book available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Behind-Knife-ABSITE-Podcast-Companion/dp/B0CLDQWZG3/ref=monarch_sidesheet Be sure to check out our free study aid, which includes all 32 review episodes, brief written summaries, high yield images, and flash cards. Simply create an account on our iOS or Android app or on our website and you will find the entire course in your Library. Apple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/behind-the-knife/id1672420049 Google Play App Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.btk.app Behind the Knife would like to sincerely thank Medtronic for sponsoring the entire 2026 ABSITE podcast series. Medtronic has a rich history of supporting surgical education, and we couldn't be happier that they chose to partner with Behind the Knife. Learn more at https://www.medtronic.com/en-us/index.html If you like the work that Behind the Knife is doing, please leave us a review wherever you listen to podcasts. Please visit https://behindtheknife.org to access other high-yield surgical education podcasts, videos and more. Check out our recent episodes here: https://behindtheknife.org/listen Behind the Knife Premium: General Surgery Oral Board Review Course: https://behindtheknife.org/premium/general-surgery-oral-board-review Trauma Surgery Video Atlas: https://behindtheknife.org/premium/trauma-surgery-video-atlas Dominate Surgery: A High-Yield Guide to Your Surgery Clerkship: https://behindtheknife.org/premium/dominate-surgery-a-high-yield-guide-to-your-surgery-clerkship Dominate Surgery for APPs: A High-Yield Guide to Your Surgery Rotation: https://behindtheknife.org/premium/dominate-surgery-for-apps-a-high-yield-guide-to-your-surgery-rotation Vascular Surgery Oral Board Review Course: https://behindtheknife.org/premium/vascular-surgery-oral-board-audio-review Colorectal Surgery Oral Board Review Course: https://behindtheknife.org/premium/colorectal-surgery-oral-board-audio-review Surgical Oncology Oral Board Review Course: https://behindtheknife.org/premium/surgical-oncology-oral-board-audio-review Cardiothoracic Oral Board Review Course: https://behindtheknife.org/premium/cardiothoracic-surgery-oral-board-audio-review Behind the Knife in Español - repaso para el examen de certificación en cirugía general: https://app.behindtheknife.org/premium/repaso-para-el-examen-de-certificaci-n-en-cirug-a-general
Join hosts Raj, Ashwin, and Eddie in this episode of Blood Cancer Talks as they welcome Dr. Luciano Costa, the first author of the NEJM manuscript on the MajesTEC-3 RCT, which was presented at ASH 2025. This episode dives deep into the trial's topline findings, capturing the nuances of the patient population, efficacy and safety data, and the future implications for treatment. The episode also examines the comparative efficacy of bispecific T-cell engagers versus CAR-T therapies, along with spirited discussion on the potential for fixed-duration treatment in myeloma care. Episode Highlights Main Topics Covered MajesTEC-3 Trial: Teclistamab-Daratumumab vs. Standard of Care Trial design and patient populationPrimary endpoint: Progression-free survival (PFS)MRD negativity rates and depth of responseOverall survival and safety profileClinical implications for treatment selectionTreatment Selection in Early Relapse Comparing MajesTEC-3 and CARTITUDE-4 patient populationsFramework for choosing between bispecific antibodies vs. CAR T-cell therapyManaging anti-CD38 exposed patientsLink to the NEJM paper: https://www.nejm.org/doi/abs/10.1056/NEJMoa2514663
In this week's episode we've pulled a vault recording from 2025! Blood editor Dr. Laurie Sehn interviews authors Drs. David-Alexandre Trégouët and Johannes Schetelig on their research published in volume 146 issue 19 of Blood journal. Dr. Trégouët's study conducted a genome-wide association study supplemented by transcriptome and Mendelian randomization analyses to identify 28 loci and proteins associated with VTE recurrence risk. This work provides genomic evidence that inherited variants contribute to the risk of VTE recurrence, raising the possibility of a more personalized approach to the prevention of recurrent VTE. The study conducted by Dr. Schetelig and colleagues report the results of a long term trial on patients with poor-response AML, comparing outcomes between patients who received salvage chemotherapy versus immediate transplantation. With no difference in survival rates at 5 years, outcomes seem to be determined mainly by genetic risk factors, age, and comorbidities, therefore challenging the routine use of intensive remission induction before allogeneic transplant in patients with an available donor and underscore the need for novel therapeutic strategies for poor-risk AML.Featured Articles:Molecular Determinants of Thrombosis Recurrence Risk Across Venous Thromboembolism Subtypes Disease risk but not remission status determines transplant outcomes in AML: long-term outcomes of the ASAP trial
When it comes to your pet's health, there is no word more terrifying than "cancer." The immediate reaction is often fear, followed by a difficult question: "I wouldn't put myself through chemo, so why would I put my dog through it?"In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Rance Gamblin, a veterinary oncologist formerly at Metropolitan Veterinary Hospital and now professor at Mississippi State College of Veterinary Medicine with 24+ years of experience and a calming presence that could soothe even the most "OCD" pet parent (just ask Alice!). Dr. Gamblin helps us navigate the emotional and medical complexities of a cancer diagnosis, explaining why veterinary oncology is often far more compassionate and focused on quality of life than human medicine.In this episode, we discuss:- The "Quality of Life" Philosophy: Why the goals of pet oncology differ from human oncology—focusing on making pets feel better for longer, rather than "curing at any cost."- Common Culprits: A look at the most frequent cancers Dr. Gamblin treats, including Lymphoma, Mast Cell Tumors, and Osteosarcoma.- The Truth About Side Effects: Do dogs lose their hair? Dr. Gamblin shares the reality of how pets handle chemotherapy (hint: there's a lot more tail-wagging involved than you'd think).- Treatment Innovations: Insights into the Yale vaccine study and the fascinating science behind the Melanoma vaccine. -Proactive Pet Parenting: Why Dr. Gamblin's biggest pet peeve is the "let's just watch it" approach, and why your pet's breath or a quick rectal exam could be a lifesaver.- Knowing When It's Time: A heart-to-heart on the "Big Four" indicators of quality of life and how to navigate the toughest decision a pet owner can make.Dr. Rance Gamblin earned his BS in Biology from Mississippi State and completed his residency in Oncology and Hematology at The Ohio State University. For over two decades, he has been a pillar of the veterinary community at Metropolitan Veterinary Hospital, known for his expertise, his steady hand, and an accent you'll just have to hear for yourself to guess where he's from! He is currently a professor at Mississippi State College of Veterinary Medicine.--What started during the COVID-19 lockdown with one baby gorilla at the Cleveland Zoo has grown into a channel loved by animal fans around the world. I'm a one-person operation—filming, editing, narrating, and sharing the most heartfelt moments of baby gorillas, orangutans, elephants, and other zoo animals. Whether it's Jameela's emotional journey or Clementine's first steps, each video brings you closer to the animals and their stories. If you love watching real animal behavior, learning fun facts, and supporting conservation through storytelling—this is your place! Subscribe to Larry's Animal Safari on YouTube @larrysanimalsafari ---Support our sponsor for this episode Blue Buffalo by visiting bluebuffalo.com. BLUE Natural Veterinary Diet formulas offer the natural alternative in nutritional therapy. At Blue Buffalo, we have an in-house Research & Development (R&D) team with over 300 years' experience in well-pet and veterinary therapeutic diets, over 600 scientific publications, and over 50 U.S. patents. At Blue Buffalo, we have an in-house Research & Development (R&D) team with over 300 years' experience in well-pet and veterinary therapeutic diets, over 600 scientific publications, and over 50 U.S. patents.---All footage is owned by SLA Video Productions.
The most anticipated annual tradition on Out of Patients returns with the 2025 Holiday Podcast Spectacular starring Matthew's twins Koby and Hannah. Now 15 and a half and deep into sophomore year, the twins deliver another unfiltered year end recap that longtime listeners wait for every December. What began as a novelty in 2018 has become a time capsule of adolescence, parenting, and how fast childhood burns off.This year's recap covers real moments from 2025 A subway ride home with a bloodied face after running full speed into that tree that grows in Brooklyn. Broadway obsessions fueled by James Madison High School's Roundabout Youth Ensemble access, including Chess, & Juliet, Good Night and Good Luck, and Pirates of Penzance holding court on Broadway. A Disneylanmd trip where the Millennium Falcon triggered a full system reboot. A New York Auto Show pilgrimage capped by a Bugatti sighting. All the things.The twins talk school pressure, AP classes, learner permit anxiety, pop culture fixation, musical theater devotion, and the strange clarity that comes with turning 15. The humor stays sharp, the details stay specific, and the passage of time stays undefeated. This episode lands where the show works best: family, honesty, and letting young people speak for themselves.FEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
In this podcast episode, Jesus Berdeja, MD; Amrita Krishnan, MD, FACP; and Niels van de Donk, MD, PhD, address key questions on CELMoD agent therapy for multiple myeloma, including:Combination strategiesAdverse event managementWhere CELMoD agents may best fit within current and future treatment strategies Presenters: Jesus Berdeja, MDDirector of Multiple Myeloma ResearchGreco-Hainsworth Centers for ResearchTennessee OncologyNashville, TennesseeAmrita Krishnan, MD, FACPDirector, Judy and Bernard Center for Myeloma, City of HopeNason Hollingsworth Family Chair MyelomaExecutive Director, Hematology, City of Hope Orange CountyProfessor Hematology/HCTIrvine, California Niels van de Donk, MD, PhDProfessor of HematologyDepartment of HematologyAmsterdam UMC, Location VUmcAmsterdam, NetherlandsContent based on an online CME program supported by an educational grant from Bristol Myers Squibb.Link to full program:https://bit.ly/4qvRwQM Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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In this week's episode, Blood editor Dr. James Griffin interviews authors Drs. Vincent Muczynski and Mark Geyer on their latest research published in Blood. Dr. Muczynski's research asks if there could there be a better gene than the factor VIII (FVIII) gene to transfer for curative treatment of hemophilia A? Dr. Geyer then explores CAR T cells armed with interleukin-18 (IL-18) secretion that target CD371, a transmembrane glycoprotein with high expression on AML and leukemia-initiating cells. Both studies explore finding novel targets for these powerful treatment modalities. Featured Articles:Alternative AAV gene therapy for hemophilia A using expression of Bi8, a novel single-chain FVIII-mimetic antibodyCD371-targeted CAR T cells secreting interleukin-18 exhibit robust expansion and clear refractory acute myeloid leukemia
Jason Gilley walked into adulthood with a fastball, a college roster spot, and a head of curls that deserved its own agent. Cancer crashed that party and took him on a tour of chemo chairs, pediatric wards, metal taste, numb legs, PTSD, and the kind of late night panic that rewires a kid before he even knows who he is.I sat with him in the studio and heard a story I know in my bones. He grew up fast. He learned how to stare down mortality at nineteen. He found anchors in baseball, therapy, and the strange friendships cancer hands you when it tears your plans apart. He owns the fear and the humor without slogans or shortcuts. Listeners will meet a young man who refuses to let cancer shrink his world. He fights for the life he wants. He names the truth without apology. He reminds us that survivorship stays messy and sacred at the same time. This conversation will stay with you.RELATED LINKS• Jason Gilley on IG• Athletek Baseball Podcast• EMDR information• Children's Healthcare of AtlantaFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This podcast is the audio from a Breastcancer.org webinar. In this candid conversation, Marisa Weiss, MD, Michele Ley, MD, FACS, Pamela Munster, MD, and Rachel Swart, MD, PhD share what they each experienced when they went from the role of healthcare provider to patient. Despite their medical training, many years of helping patients, and deep knowledge about breast cancer, they too felt their life come to a screeching halt when they were diagnosed. They spoke honestly about how they managed treatment decisions, returning to work, how the experience changed their interactions with their own patients, what everyone can learn about advocating for yourself, and much more. Their hope is that by sharing their stories, they can help others coping with the same challenges, and empower everyone affected by breast cancer. Featured speakers: Marisa Weiss, MDChief Medical Officer, Breastcancer.org Michele Ley, MD, FACSBoard-Certified Breast Surgical Oncologist and Founder, Tucson Breast Health Specialists Pamela Munster, MDDirector, Early Phase Clinical Trials Unit, Co-leader of the Center for BRCA Research, and Co-Leader, Molecular Oncology Program, University of California San Francisco Rachel Swart, MD, PhDMedical Oncology and Hematology, Arizona Oncology
Listen to JCO's Art of Oncology article, "Final Silence" by Dr. Ju Won Kim, who is an Assistant Professor at Korea University College of Medicine, Medical Oncology. The article is followed by an interview with Kim and host Dr. Mikkael Sekeres. Dr Kim explores the burden of silence when caring for dying patients. TRANSCRIPT Narrator: Final Silence, by Ju Won Kim Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Welcome back to JCO's Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology. This ASCO podcast features intimate narratives and perspectives from authors exploring their experiences in oncology. I'm your host, Mikkael Sekeres. I am a Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Hematology at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami. We are so thrilled to have joining us today, Dr. Ju Won Kim. She is Assistant Professor at Korea University College of Medicine, and she is here to discuss her Journal of Clinical Oncology article, "Final Silence." Ju Won, thank you for contributing to the Journal of Clinical Oncology and for joining us today to discuss your article. Dr. Ju Won Kim: Hello, Mikkael. It's really nice to be here. Thanks so much for inviting me. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: It's so nice to have you here today also. Thank you for also taking time so late in the evening because our time difference is so huge. Dr. Ju Won Kim: Yeah, it's not that late. It's 9 o'clock in Seoul. 9:00 PM. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: I wonder if I could start by asking you if you can tell us about yourself. Could you walk us through your career so far? Dr. Ju Won Kim: Yes. I am Ju Won Kim from Korea University in Seoul. I was born and also raised here and never really left from Seoul. I did my residency in internal medicine and fellowship in oncology at the same hospital, and now I'm an assistant professor there. So you could say I've spent my whole life on the same campus, just moving from one side of the hallway to another. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: That's a beautiful way of describing it. Is that common in Korea for somebody to remain at the same institution for training and then to continue through your career? Dr. Ju Won Kim: It used to be common about a decade ago, but nowadays it is not that common. Most of my colleagues are from another campus or another hospital. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Well, I'm so curious, what is a typical week like for you? How many days do you spend seeing patients and how much time do you spend doing research or writing or have other responsibilities? Dr. Ju Won Kim: Usually, I spend four times for my outpatient clinic, but in Korea, there are so many cancer patients and so little number of medical oncologists. I usually treat so many patients in one clinic, like maybe 20 to 30 in one time. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Wow. Dr. Ju Won Kim: Yeah, that's a burden. Most of the time I spend treating my patients, and rest of them I use to spend for my research with my lab students, and maybe with my colleagues, and I have to write something like documents or some kind of medical articles. That is about 10 or 20% of my working time, I think. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Okay, okay. That makes sense. So, and do you specialize within oncology, or do you see any person who has cancer? Dr. Ju Won Kim: I'm a medical oncologist, and I used to treat breast cancer or biliary pancreatic cancer or some kind of liver cancer or rare cancer, maybe, also. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Okay, okay. It's such a long trip. Are you able to make it to the ASCO Annual Meeting in Chicago? Dr. Ju Won Kim: Actually, I've been Chicago for ASCO meeting just one time in this year. Actually, I gave birth to my son in March, and I was in the long vacation for my birth, and the last part of my birth vacation, I went to Chicago to participate in ASCO. It was a really good time. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Oh, fantastic. That's great. How about your own story as a writer? How long have you been writing narrative pieces and when did you start? Dr. Ju Won Kim: Actually, I've always thought of myself more as a reader than a writer. Reading was my comfort zone from childhood. Then I started a small book club with friends about 10 years ago, and we began writing short reflections after each meeting. That's how writing slowly became part of my routine. When reading feels heavy, I write. When writing feels tiring, I read. It's a rhythm that keeps me balanced. At first, it was only academic writing like medical articles, but a few years ago, I challenged myself to post one short reflection a month on my Instagram, usually a quote from a book and a few sentences on why it mattered to me. It was my life about writing. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: That is really remarkable. So, did you take any formal writing classes at university? Dr. Ju Won Kim: Not really. It was just a hobby of my own. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: It always impresses me when people come into writing organically like this, where they just discover it and start and don't have formal teaching because your writing is very, very good. Dr. Ju Won Kim: Oh, thank you. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: And how do you find the time to read and write when you have a busy career, academic career, and you have a child? Dr. Ju Won Kim: It was my old routine that I used to read it before going to bed, from my bedside with a small light, I used to read some novels and get to sleep easily. But after I started to work as a medical oncologist, it was a very busy job as you know. I used to sleep more and not have time for reading. I try to read more when I get some free time. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: I love how you talk about alternating reading and writing and how when one gets too heavy, you go to the other, and then you switch back. One of the most common pieces of advice I've heard from writers is to read more. Dr. Ju Won Kim: Yeah. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: You can see how other people put thoughts together and the cadence of their writing, and also it inspires your mind to develop new ideas for writing. Dr. Ju Won Kim: Actually, the new idea also comes from the book, I think, when I came into a new book and the idea bangs up with me, so I started to write and that's an easy way to have some idea about writing. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: I'm always impressed by people who are facile with languages and bilingual or trilingual. I think I'm unfortunately a hopeless monoglot. Dr. Ju Won Kim: Maybe you can try Korean. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: I'd be embarrassed to even attempt it. When you read, do you read in Korean or do you read in English or other languages? Dr. Ju Won Kim: Definitely in Korean. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Okay, okay. And when do you find the space to write? Do you need to be alone at home in a special room or at a special desk, or do you write at work, or do you just find any time to write? Dr. Ju Won Kim: I usually don't have much time on my own because I have my baby now and some family gathers frequently. So, I always write every free time I'm trying to, any short free time in my work maybe. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: If you feel comfortable doing so - this is a very heavy piece, and a lot of us have dealt with deaths of our own patients, of course, we see this unfortunately commonly in oncology, but many of us, myself included, have also dealt with patients or their family members who've committed suicide - can you tell us what prompted you to write this piece? Dr. Ju Won Kim: As an oncologist treating biliary and pancreatic cancers, I've witnessed many deaths, as you know. Most fade with time because I treat so many patients, but just one family stayed with me, I think. It was early in my career, just months after I started this specialty, and even 5 years later, I still think about them, the family I wrote about in the "Final Silence." The story eventually became the piece I wrote. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: And what is it about them that caused you to think about them so much even years later? Dr. Ju Won Kim: I'm not sure. That's the only experience I came into someone's suicide so closely in my life, I think, and also it happened in my very early career. That's the impact. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: It is amazing how certain patients stick with us even years or decades later, particularly when they're tied to an emotional response to illness, and that can be our patients' emotional response or our own. Can you talk some about Korean culture and how cancer is viewed? Is it discussed openly? Dr. Ju Won Kim: In Korea, death is still a quiet topic. Cancer equals death in many people's minds, and death equals grief. Even today, some families ask doctors not to tell their patients about the diagnosis, but Korea is aging so fast, so I see more older patients now, but culturally, we are still learning how to talk about dying openly. That's the big problem as a medical oncologist, especially treating biliary and pancreatic cancers. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: I can just imagine. When you first meet a patient and their family is in the room, do you tell them that they have cancer, or do you need to check in with the family and with the patient how much they know about their diagnosis first? Dr. Ju Won Kim: Actually, I usually try to tell them there is a cancer, which can never be treated perfectly, because I used to treat patients with stage four, which is incurable, but I'm not sure is it okay to tell them that your life is about 3 months or 6 months or 1 year. It is not that okay for the Korean patients, especially the first time when they meet me in the clinic. I try to tell them about the truth just a few times later. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: I think that's common. I think we do that in the United States also. We may not mention a number to patients during that very first meeting because when you're talking to somebody and once you mention that number, often people will shut down. They won't hear anything else that you say. And you need to build up a relationship and some trust with somebody and also get the sense how much they want to know about their cancer and their prognosis before entering that conversation. I've certainly had instances when I'm in a room with a patient, and that patient's spouse or children, and someone else in the room will say, "How long does Dad have to live?" And I've turned to my patient, "Dad", and said, "Is this a number that you want to know?" And the patient has said, "No, I don't." Dr. Ju Won Kim: Yeah, that happens. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: So sometimes we have to be careful and check in and remind ourselves in the high emotions around a cancer diagnosis that our first responsibility is always to our patient and what they want to know about their diagnosis and their prognosis. Dr. Ju Won Kim: Do you have any opposite cases where patients really want to know the numbers? Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Yeah, I do. And, you know, you can almost predict who that's going to be depending on what they did during their lives. Dr. Ju Won Kim: Yes. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: So I have patients who are engineers or who have a math-based career like they're accountants and they'll come in and they write every number down and they want to know the number about their prognosis. I have other patients who are English professors and they want descriptively to know what the prognosis is but maybe don't want a number. So... Dr. Ju Won Kim: I think most Koreans want the number, the specific number. Yeah. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: I'm curious, is cancer in a father or a son dealt with differently than cancer in a mother or a daughter? Dr. Ju Won Kim: I don't think there's much difference between sons and daughters, or maybe moms and dad, because every child is very precious in Korea now, but between husband and wives, I think the dynamic stands out. People often say when a husband gets cancer, the wife becomes his main caregiver, but when the wife gets cancer, sometimes the husband disappears. I've heard that from my colleagues, though not often in my own clinic. Now, what I do see is many middle-aged women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer, women coming to treatment alone, strong and very independent. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Interesting. So I was going to follow up by asking if you've seen that in your own clinic. Have you seen- is it more likely that your female patients who have a cancer diagnosis come to clinic alone but the male patients come with their spouse and with family support? Dr. Ju Won Kim: Yeah, it is not just because of their sex, but most of the breast cancer patients who are female are in good condition, but biliary pancreatic cancer male patients have very poor condition, so... Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Ah... Dr. Ju Won Kim: Maybe, I think that's the problem. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Interesting. The part of your essay in which you describe the attempted suicide of your patient's daughter is absolutely chilling. How did that affect you? Have you ever had a patient attempt suicide before? Dr. Ju Won Kim: Yes, the event I wrote in my essay was extremely shocking for me, but it's the only experience I have. It wasn't my patient, but I've heard a few cases where someone in the hospital tried to take their own life. I haven't had that happen directly, but I've seen patients fall into deep depression or break down in tears. In those moments, I always suggest psychiatry nowadays. That used to be taboo in here, but the stigma is fading, and many patients actually feel better afterwards. I also check in with close family members because their mental state affects the patients, too. It's something I hope never to experience again. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: It's so unsettling when that happens, and as I mentioned, I've had a patient who took his own life, and you go back and back and back to it to wonder if there's something you could have done to intervene quicker or to get that psychosocial support in place to help that patient so that you avoid it in the future. And, you know, you protect your patients and yourself. Dr. Ju Won Kim: Yeah, I try to. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Speaking of protecting, you write, and I'm going to quote you to you, "I told myself I was protecting her, that to burden her in her final hours with such unthinkable news would be cruel. But a deeper truth is that I was protecting myself. I didn't know how to say it. I didn't know how to bear the weight of her devastation on top of my own shock and helplessness, so I avoided it." Do we owe it to ourselves sometimes to protect ourselves from the pain we sometimes impart to our patients? Dr. Ju Won Kim: That reflection came from realizing how doctors sometimes say we are protecting patients from pain, but really, we are protecting ourselves, I think. It's human. We can't hold every piece of suffering we see. Setting emotional boundaries isn't weakness. It's survival. What matters is recognizing when it's self-protection and being honest about it later. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Well, I think something that really helps with that is being able to talk to our colleagues about times when this happens and recognize we're in a shared experience and that we have the support of our colleagues, and they recognize how hard it is to be the bearer of bad news to other people and to bring pain to them sometimes. Dr. Ju Won Kim: That really works. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Dr. Ju Won Kim, it has been such a pleasure having you on this show. Dr. Kim has written just a fabulous essay called "Final Silence" for JCO Art of Oncology. Thank you so much for sharing your article with us and for joining us today. Dr. Ju Won Kim: Yeah, thank you so much for the conversation. It was a pleasure talking with you. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: If you've enjoyed this episode, consider sharing it with a friend or a colleague or leave us a review. Your feedback and support helps us continue to have these important conversations. If you're looking for more episodes and context, follow our show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen and explore more from ASCO at asco.org/podcasts. Until next time, this has been Mikkael Sekeres for Cancer Stories. The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Show Notes: Like, share and subscribe so you never miss an episode and leave a rating or review. Guest Bio:Dr Ju Won Kim is an Assistant Professor at Korea University College of Medicine, Medical Oncology.
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Dr. Marissa Russo trained to become a cancer biologist. She spent four years studying one of the deadliest brain tumors in adults and built her entire research career around a simple, urgent goal: open her own lab and improve the odds for patients with almost no shot at survival. In 2024 she applied for an F31 diversity grant through the NIH. The reviewers liked her work. Her resubmission was strong. Then the grant system started glitching. Dates vanished. Study sections disappeared. Emails went silent. When she finally reached a program officer, the message was clear: scrub the DEI language, withdraw, and resubmit. She rewrote the application in ten days. It failed. She had to start over. Again. This time with her identity erased.Marissa left the lab. She found new purpose as a science communicator, working at STAT News through the AAAS Mass Media Fellowship. Her story captures what happens when talent collides with institutional sabotage. Not every scientist gets to choose a Plan B. She made hers count.RELATED LINKSMarissa Russo at STAT NewsNIH F31 grant story in STATAAAS Mass Media FellowshipContact Marissa RussoFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
In this week's episode, Blood editor Dr. Laurie Sehn interviews three of the latest Blood authors: Drs. Vijay Sankaran, Ruud Delwel, Françoise Kraeber-Bodere. Two studies on the MECOM gene have been paired in this episode, analyzing new groundwork for potential novel myeloid differentiation therapies via repression of MECOM restoring enhancer mediated CEBPA expression. We'll also hear about the results of CASSIOPET, imaging companion study of the CASSIOPEIA trial, and how achieving negativity in PET before starting maintenance therapy is significant even in patients who still show residual disease in the bone marrow.Featured ArticlesCEBPA repression by MECOM blocks differentiation to drive aggressive leukemiasMECOM is a master repressor of myeloid differentiation through dose control of CEBPA in acute myeloid leukemia Prognostic value of premaintenance FDG PET/CT response in patients with newly diagnosed from the CASSIOPEIA trial
This episode is part of the special series Empowered Intimacy: Getting Your Sexy Back After Breast Cancer, where getting your sexy back is about reclaiming confidence, connection, and desire after a breast cancer diagnosis. Melissa Berry sits down with Chelsey Pickthorn, a patient advocate living with stage four triple-negative breast cancer, and Dr. Don Dizon, Chief of Hematology and Oncology at Tufts Medicine and a national leader in sexual health and inclusive cancer care. They explore the challenges LGBTQ+ individuals face with intimacy, dating, body image, and relationships after a cancer diagnosis. Chelsey shares her experiences navigating disclosure, reconstruction, caregiving, and connection, while Dr. Dizon highlights gaps in healthcare for LGBTQ+ patients. This honest and hopeful conversation offers guidance, empowerment, and advocacy for inclusive care. Thank you to Lilly, Merck, and Novartis for making this episode possible.
Scott Capozza and I could have been cloned in a bad lab experiment. Both diagnosed with cancer in our early twenties. Both raised on dial-up and mixtapes. Both now boy-girl twin dads with speech-therapist wives and a lifelong grudge against insurance companies. Scott is the first and only full-time oncology physical therapist at Yale New Haven Health, which means if he catches a cold, cancer rehab in Connecticut flatlines. He's part of a small, stubborn tribe of providers who believe movement belongs in cancer care, not just after it. We talked about sperm banking in the nineties, marathon training during chemo, and what it means to be told you're “otherwise healthy” when your lungs, ears, and fertility disagree. Scott's proof that survivorship is not a finish line. It's an endurance event with no medals, just perspective.RELATED LINKSScott Capozza on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scott-capozza-a68873257Yale New Haven Health: https://www.ynhh.orgExercising Through Cancer: https://www.exercisingthroughcancer.com/team/scott-capozza-pt-msptProfiles in Survivorship – Yale Medicine: https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/profiles-in-survivorship-scott-capozzaFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
In this Review Series episode, Blood Associate Editor, Dr. Elisabeth Battinelli discusses the Platelet Heterogeneity with authors Drs. Craig Morrell, Larry Frelinger, and Leo Nicolai. Find the full review series in volume 146 issue 24 of Blood.
Dr. MaryAnn Wilbur trained her whole life to care for patients, then left medicine behind when it became a machine that punished empathy and rewarded throughput. She didn't burn out. She got out. A gynecologic oncologist, public health researcher, and no-bullshit single mom, MaryAnn walked straight off the cliff her career breadcrumbed her to—and lived to write the book.In this episode, we talk about what happens when doctors are forced to choose between their ethics and their employment, why medicine now operates like a low-resource war zone, and how the system breaks the very people it claims to elevate. We cover moral injury, medical gaslighting, and why she refused to lie on surgical charts just to boost hospital revenue.Her escape plan? Tell the truth, organize the exodus, and build something that actually works. If you've ever wondered why your doctor disappeared, this is your answer. If you're a clinician hiding your own suffering, this is your permission slip.RELATED LINKSMaryAnn Wilbur on LinkedInMedicine ForwardClinician Burnout FoundationThe Doctor Is No Longer In (Book)Suck It Up, Buttercup (Documentary)FEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Fueled by cancer, obesity and cardiovascular deals, $1 billion-plus takeouts in biotech are at their highest level in a decade with three weeks to go in the year. On the latest BioCentury This Week, BioCentury's analysts discuss the rise in large M&A deals and what the trends among the 37 acquisitions say about biopharma dealmaking.The analysts assess first-in-human in vivo CAR T data at the American Society of Hematology meeting from Kelonia Therapeutics, which showcase the promise of the modality and justify the growing pipeline. They also break down readouts from Praxis in developmental and epileptic encephalopathy from the American Epilepsy Society Annual Meeting and from Novo Nordisk, which presented full data at the Clinical Trials on Alzheimer's Disease meeting on semaglutide's failure to treat Alzheimer's disease.Washington Editor Steve Usdin analyzes a roller-coaster week at FDA in which Richard Pazdur resigned as director of FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research and Tracy Beth Høeg became acting CDER director, a move that Usdin says will prompt staff departures, ease restraints on FDA leadersView full story: https://www.biocentury.com/article/657781#BiotechMA #CARTTherapy #EpilepsyResearch #AlzheimersDisease #FDA02:37 - Biotech M&A06:39 - In vivo CAR T10:08 - Semaglutide for Alzheimer's16:17 - Praxis22:11 - FDATo submit a question to BioCentury's editors, email the BioCentury This Week team at podcasts@biocentury.com.Reach us by sending a text
Listen to JCO's Art of Oncology article, "Smell," by Dr. Alice Cusick, who is a Hematology Section Chief at Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor Health System and Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan Division of Hematology and Oncology. The article is followed by an interview with Cusick and host Dr. Mikkael Sekeres. Dr Cusick shares a connection to a cancer patient manifested as a scent. TRANSCRIPT Narrator: Smell, by Alice Cusick, MD Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Welcome back to JCO's Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology. This ASCO podcast features intimate narratives and perspectives from authors exploring their experiences in oncology. I'm your host, Mikkael Sekeres. I'm Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Hematology at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami. Joining us today is Alice Cusick, Hematology Section Chief at the Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor Healthcare System and Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, Division of Hematology and Oncology, to discuss her Journal of Clinical Oncology article, "Smell." Alice, thank you for contributing to Journal of Clinical Oncology and for joining us to discuss your article. Dr. Alice Cusick: Thank you so much for having me, Mikkael. I appreciate it. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: It's really a pleasure, and as usual, Alice and I discussed this beforehand and agreed to call each other by first names. I always love to hear your story first. Can you tell us about yourself? Where are you from, and walk us through your career, if you could. Dr. Alice Cusick: I'm a Midwesterner. I grew up in Iowa and Illinois and went to a small college in Illinois, played basketball, Division lll, and was an English Literature major. I took one science class and was going to be an English professor. And then my father's a physician. My senior year, I realized I don't think I could spend all my time in a library. I didn't feel like I was helping anyone. And so I talked to my dad, and he said, "Yeah, I think you could be a doctor." So I thought I would help people by being a physician. So I moved to Iowa City and spent two years working in a lab and doing science classes and took the MCAT, which was the first year they had the essay on there, and I rocked that. That was my highest score. I got into the University of Iowa and then went on to residency and fellowship at the University of Wisconsin, just in hematology. I didn't do solid tumors. And then went on, spent a couple years there, worked in Pennsylvania in more of a group practice, and then came back to academics at the University of Michigan about 10 years ago. And then five years ago, I became the Hematology Section Chief at the VA in Ann Arbor. So I work there full time now. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: I love that story. I served on the admissions committee at Cleveland Clinic and Case Western when I was also a Midwesterner for 18 years. And I always wondered if instead of searching for science majors, we should be searching for English majors because I think there's a core element of medicine that is actually storytelling. Dr. Alice Cusick: Oh, very much so. My father was a country doctor for many, many years in rural Iowa in the fifties and sixties. So he did house calls, and he talked about how you really got to know people by going to their house. And I'll never forget the first time that I did a full history and physical, I think I was maybe a second-year medical student, and I was telling him, "Oh, I'm so excited. I'm going to do my first history and physical." And he said, "Alice, don't talk to them about medicine right away or about their problems right away. Talk to them about something else. Get to know them because you know about sports, talk about sports." I said, "Dad, that's called establishing rapport." You know, that's what they had taught us. But it was intuitive to him. I'll never forget that he just said their story is important and how they live and where they live and who they live with is so important. It really helps you figure out their medical issues as well. And I've always tried to carry that through. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: It's funny what we glean from our parents. My dad was a journalist for the Providence Journal-Bulletin. He was a reporter for a couple of decades, and I almost feel like some of what I'm doing is acting as a reporter. It's my job to get the story and get the story right and solicit enough details from a patient that I really have a sense that I'm with them on the journey of their illness, so I can understand it completely. Dr. Alice Cusick: Oh, very much so. And that's one of the things I really harp about with the fellows because sometimes I remember more of the social history than I do sometimes the medical history when I'm seeing a patient. I remind them, you need to know who they live with and how they live. It helps you take care of them. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Well, and that must be particularly germane with your patient population. When I was a medical student, my first rotation on internal medicine was at the Philadelphia VA, and it's actually what convinced me to specialize within internal medicine. What is it like caring for veterans? Dr. Alice Cusick: This is the best job I've ever had in my life. And I think because it speaks to my sense of duty that I got from my parents, particularly from my father, and I really feel I got back to my original focus, which is helping people. So that sense of duty and serving those who served, which is our core mission, this job is the most rewarding I've ever had because you really feel like you're helping people. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: How much do you learn about your patients' military history when you first interact with them? Dr. Alice Cusick: It can come up in conversation. It sort of depends on what the context is and how much you ask and how much of that is incorporated into what's going on with their medical history. It comes up a lot in terms of, particularly cancer, because a lot of cancers that veterans develop can be related to their military exposures. So it can come up certainly in that context. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: You write about how your patient and his wife brought in photographs of his younger self. Can you describe some of those photos? Dr. Alice Cusick: So a lot of it was about the sports he was doing at the time. He was kind of almost like a bodybuilder and doing like martial arts. So there were some pictures of him in his shirt and shorts, showing how healthy he was. He was much younger, but it was such a contrast to how he was at that time as he was nearing death. But it really rounded out my understanding of him because, as we all know, when we meet people, we see them when they're at that particular age, and we may not have that context of what they were 20, 30 years ago. But that still informs how they think about themselves. I mean, I still think of myself as an athlete even though I'm much older. So that's important to understand how the patient thinks about himself or herself. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: You know, it's funny you mentioned those two photographs. I- immediately flashed into my mind, I had a patient who also was a martial arts expert, and I remember he was in his early seventies and hospitalized, but he made sure to put up that photo of him when he was in his prime, in his martial arts outfit in a pose. And I've had another patient who was a boxer, and all he wanted to talk about whenever he saw me was his first experience boxing in Madison Square Garden and what that moment felt like of climbing into the ring, squeezing in between the ropes, and facing off in front of what must have been some massive crowd. Dr. Alice Cusick: Yeah. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Why do you think it was important to them to bring in those photos to show you? Dr. Alice Cusick: I think it was to help me understand what he had been. I think it was important for him, and because we had a relationship, it wasn't just transactional in terms of his medical problems. It was really conversations every day about what he was doing and how his life was going. And I think he really wanted me to understand what he had been. And so I felt really honored because I think that was important. It told me that his relationship with me was very important to him. I found that very, very humbling. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Yeah, I find it fascinating the details that patients offer to us about themselves as opposed to the ones that we solicit. I think it speaks to also the closeness of the relationship we have with patients when they want to share that aspect of them. They want to show you who they were before they were ill. And it's not a point of bragging. It's not flexing for them. I think it's really to remind themselves and us of the vitality of the person who's sitting in front of us or lying in front of us in the hospital johnny or sitting on an exam table. Dr. Alice Cusick: Oh, very much so. And I've experienced that even with my own parents as they got older and were in the medical system. I remember vividly, my father had had a stroke, and the people taking care of him didn't understand what he had been. They didn't understand that his voice was very different. We kept asking, you know, "His voice is different." They had no concept of him beforehand. So that also really hit home to me how important it is to understand patients in the whole context of their lives. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: And as a family member, do you think it's equally important to share that story of who somebody was before they were ill as a reminder to yourself and to the people taking care of a relative? Dr. Alice Cusick: Oh, very much so. I think it's very helpful because it also makes you feel like you're supporting the loved one as well by, if they can't speak for themselves, particularly when they're very ill, to help people understand, it may help the physicians or any provider understand their illness better, especially if there's a diagnostic dilemma, thinking about going home, what are they going to need at home, those sorts of things. I think it's always important to try to provide that context. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Patients will often talk about their deaths or transitions to hospice as an abstract future. Do you think they rely on us to make the decision about a concrete transition to hospice, or do you think they know it's time and are looking for us to verbalize it for their family and friends? Dr. Alice Cusick: I think it depends on how much groundwork you've done beforehand. So when you talk about end of life with people well before that transition it's almost mandatory, I think it's very important. It makes the transition much smoother because then they understand what hospice is, and they can prepare themselves. When they're not prepared, I think it's much more of a very clear transition. So it's almost like you're shutting one door, disease treatment, and moving on to, "I'm just going home to die," versus when you're laying the groundwork and you make sure that it's about how you live. I always try to emphasize, it's how you want to spend your time. It's how you want to live. Hospice is helping people live the best they can for as long as they can. And if you haven't prepared people, I think then they think much more you're closing the door and you're just sending me home to die. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: It's tricky though, isn't it? Because as an oncologist or hematologist-oncologist, in our case, people look to us for that hope that there's still something to do and there's still life ahead of them. But at a certain point, we all realize that we need to transition our focus. But once we say that out loud, do you ever feel like it almost shuts a door for our patients? Dr. Alice Cusick: Again, it depends on the situation, and it depends on the support they have. It's different when you're dealing with somebody who's out in an outpatient world who has good family support and you've developed a relationship versus the patient who's taken a very sudden turn for the worse, and maybe is in the hospital, and things are more chaotic, and maybe they've been on very active treatment beforehand, but suddenly things have changed. So in my mind, it depends on the context that you're dealing with and what the relationship you have prior to. Maybe you're covering for your colleague, and you don't have a relationship with that particular family or that particular patient, but yet you have to talk to them. Somebody gets transferred from another hospital and you have a very brief relationship. And so I think the relationship kind of dictates sometimes how patients feel. But as long as you can help people understand the process of end of life as best as you can, I think that sometimes helps the transition. Some people are going to be angry no matter what. And that's totally understandable, angry about their family member dying, angry about what's happening to them if they're the patient. I think that's always part of the process, but it's hard to make things smooth all of the time. We do the best we can. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: I was going to ask, has anyone ever been shocked when you start to talk about palliative care or hospice and never really did see it coming? Dr. Alice Cusick: Oh, of course. I think, especially if you've been doing this for a while, you sometimes see the future. You know what's, well, I mean, not exactly, but you have a good sense of what's going to happen. And there can be times when you start talking about end of life and palliative care or hospice and people are shocked, particularly family members, family members who may not be there all the time, who may not have seen their loved one frequently and haven't just understood what the disease course has been. And that certainly can be shocking. And again, totally understandable, but it's my responsibility to try to smooth that over and help people understand what's going on and make it a conversation. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: It's a nice description of what we do. We make it a conversation. When talking about what you smelled that day when you saw your patient, you write, "Did I suddenly have a gift? Could I float through the hospital wards and smell the future? Or maybe I could only smell inevitability." It's a beautiful sentence. "Could I only smell inevitability?" What do you think it was that led you to know that his time had come? And I wonder, was it a distinct odor or what I refer to as a Malcolm Gladwell "blink" moment, you know, in which your 25 years of experience allowed you to synthesize a hundred different sensory and cognitive inputs in a split second to realize this was the time? Dr. Alice Cusick: I think I knew it was time because I had been seeing him so frequently and I knew him very well. The smell was very real to me. My husband and I disagree because I've talked to my husband about this. He thinks it was a real smell and that I did smell something. I think it was more that amalgamation of my experience and, as I said in the piece, a scent took the place of a thought. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Huh. Dr. Alice Cusick: But it bothered me so much, and that's when I talk about, "Did I have a gift?" You know, there are people who can smell diseases. There's a report of a woman who could smell Parkinson's disease. I thought, "Have I suddenly developed some sort of gift?" But in my mind, I thought, "You know, it was inevitability." I mean, it was inevitable that this gentleman was going to die of this disease. So that was my thought. I don't think I had a gift. I think it was smelling the inevitability that I understood through experience and knowing this patient so well. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: Why do you think that smell haunted you so much afterwards? I mean, you really think about it and really dwell on it. I think in a way that any one of us would. Dr. Alice Cusick: I think because I thought there was something wrong with me. As I said in the piece, I thought it made my experience of that patient, my memory of that visit in particular and the whole relationship with him, I was thinking more about myself instead of thinking about him and his experience and his family's experience. And you know, you always grieve for patients, and it was interfering with my normal process. And so it really bothered me. In the end, it was more, "What was wrong with me?" This was weird, and it just sort of played with my usual understanding of how these things were supposed to go. And that's what really bothered me. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: It is true. We really feel acutely our patients' loss, and it's so much more, I don't know if "acute" is the right word, or so much more meaningful when it's someone we've gotten to know over years, isn't it? Dr. Alice Cusick: Oh, very much so. You grieve for them, you miss them. At the same time, you also, you know, especially with this patient, his death was how he wanted it. So helping someone with the, quote unquote, "good death", the death surrounded by family, the death where there is no suffering or as minimal suffering as possible, you do find that helps with the grief, I think, instead of thinking, "Oh, what did I do wrong? What did I miss?" You can make it somewhat helpful in processing the grief. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: It's perhaps one of the more exquisite aspects of the art of medicine is helping people with that transition in their final days and sharing in the emotions of that. It has been such a pleasure to have Alice Cusick, who is Hematology Section Chief at Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor Health System and Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan, Division of Hematology and Oncology to discuss "Smell." Alice, thank you so much for submitting your article and for joining us today. Dr. Alice Cusick: Oh, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Dr. Mikkael Sekeres: If you've enjoyed this episode, consider sharing it with a friend or colleague or leave us a review. Your feedback and support helps us continue to have these important conversations. If you're looking for more episodes and context, follow our show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen and explore more from ASCO at asco.org/podcasts. Until next time, this has been Mikkael Sekeres for Cancer Stories. The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Show Notes: Like, share and subscribe so you never miss an episode and leave a rating or review. Guest Bio: Dr Alice Cusick is Hematology Section Chief at Veterans Affairs Ann Arbor Health System and Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan Division of Hematology and Oncology.
In this special episode, Blood editor Dr. Laura Michaelis interviews Dr. Arielle Langer and Blood Associate editor Dr. Marc Blondon for this special Maternal Health episode. In honor of the second Maternal Health compendium, both discuss their papers featured in this special collection. Featured Articles: β-Thalassemia minor is associated with high rates of worsening anemia in pregnancyLongitudinal profile of estrogen-related thrombotic biomarkers after cessation of combined hormonal contraceptivesSee the entire Maternal Health Compendium Second Edition
Episode 5 of Standard Deviation with Oliver Bogler on the Out of Patients podcast feed pulls you straight into the story of Dr Ethan Moitra, a psychologist who fights for LGBTQ mental health while the system throws every obstacle it can find at him.Ethan built a study that tracked how COVID 19 tore through an already vulnerable community. He secured an NIH grant. He built a team. He reached 180 participants. Then he opened an email on a Saturday and learned that Washington had erased his work with one sentence about taxpayer priorities. The funding vanished. The timeline collapsed. His team scattered. Participants who trusted him sat in limbo.A federal court eventually forced the government to reinstate the grant, but the damage stayed baked into the process. Ethan had to push through months of paperwork while his university kept the original deadline as if the shutdown had not happened. The system handed him a win that felt like a warning.I brought Ethan on because his story shows how politics reaches into science and punishes the people who serve communities already carrying too much trauma. His honesty lands hard because he names the fear now spreading across academia and how young scientists question whether they can afford to care about the wrong population.You will hear what this ordeal did to him, what it cost his team, and why he refuses to walk away.RELATED LINKSFaculty PageNIH Grant DetailsScientific PresentationBoston Globe CoverageFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
In this week's episode, Blood editor Dr. James Griffin speaks with Drs. Emanuele Zucca and Sandra Pinho about their latest articles published in Blood. Dr. Zucca discusses his second analysis of the IELSG37 trial, where findings suggested that R-CHOP21 rituximab, cyclophosphamide,doxorubicin, vincristine, and prednisone, administered every 21 days) may be a suboptimal frontline regimen for PMBCL. Dr. Pinho discusses the aging megakaryocytic niche and its influence on the age-associated decline in HSC and progenitor cell function. The authors demonstrate that remodeling of the megakaryocytic niche and associated platelet factor 4 (PF4) downregulation are central mechanisms driving HSC aging.Featured Articles: Impact of immunochemotherapy regimens on outcomes of patients with primary mediastinal B-cell lymphoma in the IELSG37 trial Platelet Factor 4 (PF4) Regulates Hematopoietic Stem Cell Aging
Mehlman Qbanks: https://qbanks.mehlmanmedical.com/IG: https://www.instagram.com/mehlman_medical/Telegram: https://mehlmanmedical.com/subscribe/
Chelsea J. Smith walks into a studio and suddenly I feel like a smurf. She's six-foot-three of sharp humor, dancer's poise, and radioactive charm. A working actor and thyroid cancer survivor, Chelsea is the kind of guest who laughs while dropping truth bombs about what it means to be told you're “lucky” to have the “good cancer.” We talk about turning trauma into art, how Shakespeare saved her sanity during the pandemic, and why bartending might be the best acting class money can't buy. She drops the polite bullshit, dismantles survivor guilt with punchline precision, and reminds every listener that grace and rage can live in the same body. If you've ever been told to “walk it off” while your body betrayed you, this one hits close.RELATED LINKS• Chelsea J. Smith Website• Chelsea on Instagram• Chelsea on Backstage• Chelsea on YouTube• Cancer Hope Network• Artichokes and Grace – Book by Chelsea's motherFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
We all know how hard it is to feel out of place. To not know where we belong. Being part of a community, a tribe, is not only important for our physical well being but it's vitally important for our brain health and mental wellness! Why am I talking about tribes and communities here on Game On Glio? Because-my friend, you are part of our tribe! You are never alone. You are part of this community. Seth Godin talks about tribes as being essential for growth and leadership. He also explains that in order to pursue something passionately one must have "Faith that leads to HOPE, and it overcomes FEAR. Faith is critical to ALL innovation.” This is important because it's this type of thinking and leadership that has led to some of the most innovative clinical trials out right now. One of those trials is the ReSPECT-gbm trial. Today we sit down with Andrew Brenner, MD, PhD; a professor of medicine in the Division of Hematology and Oncology at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio. A tumor biologist and oncologist, his focus is in drug development for the management of primary brain tumors and breast neoplasms. Dr. Brenner's academic work focuses on both clinical cancer management and the development of novel therapies to treat breast and central nervous system tumors. And, Dr. Toral Patel who is an Associate Professor and neurosurgeon at the UT Southwestern Medical Center, specializing in brain tumor surgery, including malignant and benign tumors. Her expertise includes advanced surgical techniques like laser interstitial thermal therapy (LITT) and she also holds a patent for nano-carrier research for central nervous system diseases. Together, they discuss the importance of clincial trials and the why and how of ReSPECT-GBM and ReSPECT-LM trials. If you like our show, please help us continue to grow and reach new listeners. Share our podcast with others and consider giving us a review on Apple and Spotify! Season Premier Sponsors: Imvax Inc. (imvax.com) GammaTile (gammatile.com) Episode Sponsors: Cypris Therapeutics Curtana Pharmaceuticals Brockport Custom Carpets
We talk with physiologist Elliot Jenkins about how passive heat acclimation boosts VO2 max, hemoglobin mass, and cardiac function in trained runners without adding mechanical training load. Practical protocols, safety tips, and open research questions round out a clear, actionable guide to using heat wisely.• Elliot's path from Otago to a PhD in the UK• Why passive heat instead of exercising in heat• Hematology: plasma volume expansion • Cardiac changes: larger end-diastolic volume and stroke volume• VO2 max and speed gains in trained runners• Practical protocol: time, temperature, frequency, hydration• Safety: dizziness, slow exits, supervision, low blood pressure• Dose-response unknowns and hot-climate athletes• Heat vs cold and contrast for recovery and adaptation• Where to find Elliot's paper and social links (see below).Follow Elliott Jenkins on X @E_J_Jenkins His paper is published here: https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/JP289874
When Julia Stalder heard the words ductal carcinoma in situ, she was told she had the “best kind of breast cancer.” Which is like saying you got hit by the nicest bus. Julia's a lawyer turned mediator who now runs DCIS Understood, a new nonprofit born out of her own diagnosis. Instead of panicking and letting the system chew her up, she asked questions the industry would rather avoid. Why do women lose breasts for conditions that may never become invasive? Why is prostate cancer allowed patience while breast cancer gets the knife? We talked about doctors' fear of uncertainty, the epidemic of overtreatment, and what happens when you build a movement while still in the waiting room. Funny, fierce, unfiltered—this one sticks.RELATED LINKS• DCIS Understood• Stalder Mediation• Julia's story in CURE Today• PreludeDx DCISionRT feature• Julia on LinkedInFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Join hosts Eddie, Ashwin, and Raj as they welcome Dr. Michelle Yong and Dr. Gemma Reynolds, academic infectious diseases physicians from the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre and the National Centre for Infections in Cancer, for an in-depth discussion on cytomegalovirus (CMV) management in immunocompromised hematology patients.Key Topics CoveredFundamentals of CMV ManagementDistinguishing CMV reactivation from CMV diseaseTreatment thresholds and target viral loadsProphylaxis strategies in non-allograft settingsValaciclovir dosing in general hematology populationsHigh-risk patient populationsFirst-Line TherapiesValganciclovir: advantages, disadvantages, and myelosuppressionFoscarnet: indications and monitoring strategiesTreatment-resistant CMVAllogeneic Transplant PatientsHigh-risk populations and timing of reactivationMonitoring protocols post-transplantRandomized Controlled TrialsAURORA Trial: Maribavir vs. ValganciclovirDesign: RCT comparing maribavir to valganciclovir for pre-emptive CMV therapy post-allogeneic transplant [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38036487/]NEJM Letermovir Prophylaxis TrialDesign: Double-blind, placebo-controlled RCT of letermovir prophylaxis post-allogeneic transplant [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29211658/]Emerging Patient PopulationsCMV in lymphoma and myeloma patients receiving CAR T-cell therapy and T-cell engaging bispecific antibodiesMonitoring and prophylaxis strategies for novel immunotherapiesImpact of CMV on post-CAR T mortality-https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40203190/
Dr. Rachel Gatlin entered neuroscience with curiosity and optimism. Then came chaos. She started her PhD at the University of Utah in March 2020—right as the world shut down. Her lab barely existed. Her advisor was on leave. Her project focused on isolation stress in mice, and then every human on earth became her control group. Rachel fought through supply shortages, grant freezes, and the brutal postdoc job market that treats scientists like disposable parts. When her first offer vanished under a hiring freeze, she doubled down, rewrote her plan, and won her own NIH training grant. Her story is about survival in the most literal sense—how to keep your brain intact when the system built to train you keeps collapsing.RELATED LINKS• Dr. Rachel Gatlin on LinkedIn• Dr. Gatlin's Paper Preprint• Dr. Eric Nestler on Wikipedia• News Coverage: Class of 2025 – PhD Students Redefine PrioritiesFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship email podcasts@matthewzachary.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
EPISODE DESCRIPTIONBefore she was raising millions to preserve fertility for cancer patients, Tracy Weiss was filming reenactments in her apartment for the Maury Povich Show using her grandmother's china. Her origin story includes Jerry Springer, cervical cancer, and a full-body allergic reaction to bullshit. Now, she's Executive Director of The Chick Mission, where she weaponizes sarcasm, spreadsheets, and the rage of every woman who's ever been told “you're fine” while actively bleeding out in a one-stall office bathroom.We get into all of it. The diagnosis. The misdiagnosis. The second opinion that saved her life. Why fertility preservation is still a luxury item. Why half of oncologists still don't mention it. And what it takes to turn permission to be pissed into a platform that actually pays for women's futures.This episode is blunt, hilarious, and very Jewish. There's chopped liver, Carrie Bradshaw slander, and more than one “fuck you” to the status quo. You've been warned.RELATED LINKSThe Chick MissionTracy Weiss on LinkedInFertility Preservation Interview (Dr. Aimee Podcast)Tracy's Story in Authority MagazineNBC DFW FeatureStork'd Podcast EpisodeNuDetroit ProfileChick Mission 2024 Gala RecapFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform. For guest suggestions or sponsorship, email podcast@matthewzachary.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
EPISODE DESCRIPTION:Libby Amber Shayo didn't just survive the pandemic—she branded it. Armed with a bun, a New York accent, and enough generational trauma to sell out a two-drink-minimum crowd, she turned her Jewish mom impressions into the viral sensation known as Sheryl Cohen. What started as one-off TikToks became a career in full technicolor: stand-up, sketch, podcasting, and Jewish community building.We covered everything. Jew camp lore. COVID courtship. Hannah Montana. Holocaust comedy. Dating app postmortems. And the raw, relentless grief that comes with being Jewish online in 2025. Libby's alter ego lets her say the quiet parts out loud, but the real Libby? She's got receipts, range, and a righteous sense of purpose.If you're burnt out on algorithm-friendly “influencers,” meet a creator who actually stands for something. She doesn't flinch. She doesn't filter. And she damn well earned her platform.This is the most Jewish episode I've ever recorded. And yes, there will be guilt.RELATED LINKSLibby's Website: https://libbyambershayo.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/libbyambershayoTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@libbyambershayoLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/libby-walkerSchmuckboys Podcast: https://jewishjournal.com/podcasts/schmuckboysForbes Feature: Modern Mrs. Maisel Vibes https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshweissMedium Profile: https://medium.com/@libbyambershayoFEEDBACKLike this episode? Rate and review Out of Patients on your favorite podcast platform.For guest suggestions or sponsorship, email podcast@matthewzachary.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.