The latest Leukaemia Foundation’s MPN newsletter features a detailed and wide-ranging interview with MPN expert, Professor Andrew Perkins.
As well as his ongoing care for MPN patients as a clinical haematologist, Professor Perkins and team are focussed on improving diagnostics and treatment for MPN patients, especially those with myelofibrosis.
His interview is available HERE.
An update to the Australian Cancer Atlas was released earlier this year and for the very first time it included MPNs. This was such an encouraging development for MPN research.
Since that time, researchers and epidemiologists have been exploring MPN incidence further and a paper has just been released in the journal ‘Pathology’.
MPN AA thanks the authors for their thoughtful analysis and is proud to have been able to support this research through donations from the Australian MPN community.
Due to the restrictions around access to medical journals, free access to the full article will be available until 3 November 2021.
Norman Swan’s Health Report has featured an item about people with blood malignancies and their response to Covid-19 vaccines.
The item relates to new research published in the Lancet Haematology. This research found that people with blood malignancies may not produce as many protective antibodies to the vaccines as others.
This is because in blood cancers, the immune system itself is affected.
Norman interviewed haematologist, Associate Professor Kate Burbury, about this research. A brief extract is below as well as the link to the article.
Kate Burbury: Most of us [haematologists and oncologists] would be advocating some protection is better than none. And the only concern we would have is that they [the blood cancer patient] might not mount an adequate antibody response and therefore advocating that they continue to pursue the usual protective mechanisms such as keeping themselves safe and avoiding people that might have infective symptoms.
The interview transcript, podcast and the research in the Lancet Haematology are linked HERE.
Subsequent to the above article, the Leukaemia and Lymphoma society in the US has outlined the response of different blood cancer patients to Covid vaccines and while a small sample, the results are very encouraging for MPN patients, showing some 97% of patients had detectable Covid-19 antibodies.
The graphic is below and the full article is linked HERE.
In what we believe could be a world first, myeloproliferative neoplasm (MPN) data is now included in the latest Australian Cancer Atlas. This Atlas provides national data on how cancer diagnosis and excess death rates vary by geographical area across Australia. This latest update incorporates details about the geographical patterns in MPN diagnoses and survival across Australia from 2007-2016.
The inclusion of MPNs is the initiative of Cancer Council Queensland, in collaboration with QUT. The MPNAA donated $10,000 towards this initiative and wishes to thank in particular Professor Peter Baade and his team, Dr Jess Cameron as well as WA’s Professor Lin Fritschi for their dedication to enabling MPNs to be part of this important resource.
The Australian Cancer Atlas is an interactive online resource helping researchers, members of the community, medical professionals and policy makers understand how the cancer burden varies by small geographical areas across Australia. It is fascinating to see how MPNs diagnoses vary across Australia, as well as MPN survival rates. The Atlas enables users to easily visualise those differences and offers critical insight into how the patterns of cancer and outcomes in Australia vary depending on where people live, which can be used to drive research priorities and policies going forward.
Professor Baade said that “The Australian Cancer Atlas has already proven itself to be an invaluable resource and benefit to many Australians, gaining industry, scientific and community acclaim. By updating the data contained in the Atlas ensures it remains relevant, and provides a great foundation for the next phase of development.”
MPN patient Jolanda Visser from the MPN Alliance Australia said that she was pleased to hear about MPNs being included in the Atlas. MPN Alliance Australia’s $10,000 donation was raised through a major fundraising dinner organised by Jolanda Visser held in 2018. “Having looked at the Atlas and seeing that we can retrieve MPN stats is making me feel very good,” said Ms Visser. “It is exciting that patients like me will be able to look at this information about MPN in their local area.” The MPNAA is keen to optimise the accuracy of MPN data, which is reliant on reporting of MPNs within each state and territory. The MPNAA will be liaising with stakeholders with the aim of maximising the integrity of this data to further inform research and health outcomes.
Co-lead on the Australian Cancer Atlas, the Distinguished Professor Kerrie Mengersen from the Queensland University of Technology said the latest editions would greatly benefit the Queensland community. “The Australian Cancer Atlas is a shining example of what can be achieved by combining cross-institutional expertise in statistics, e-research and cancer,” said Professor Mengersen. “This collaboration is inspiring since it not only benefits our community but also leads to new knowledge and new research.”
For more information on the Australian Cancer Atlas, please visit, atlas.cancer.org.au.
To access MPN data, MPNs are listed in the Atlas as Classic MPN.
Image from the fundraiser Charity dinner organised by MPNAA’s Jolanda Visser.
Dr Jyoti Nangalia and a team of researchers from the Wellcome Sanger institute and Cambridge University in the UK will be presenting some fascinating findings at this years virtual American Society of Hematology (ASH) meeting.
Extensive genetic mapping by the team finds that MPNs “originate from driver mutation acquisition very early in life, even before birth, with life-long clonal expansion and evolution, establishing a new paradigm for blood cancer development. Early detection of mutant-JAK2 together with determination of clonal expansion rates could provide opportunities for early interventions aimed at minimising thrombotic risk and targeting the mutant clone in at risk individuals.”
Information about this presentation is available HERE courtesy of MPN Hub.
Dr Ann Mullally’s lab in the US has recently announced similarly fascinating findings. This research which further explores the cellular origins and development of mutations giving rise to JAK2 and MPNs, provides further evidence that mutations can develop decades prior to clinical presentation of MPNs, and can arise from a single hematopoietic stem cell.
More information on this important research is available HERE
MPN AA is very proud to announce that with the help of our supporters, we have donated $15,000 for MPN research in Australia to Professor Wendy Erber and her colleagues, Dr Kathryn Fuller, Dr Henry Hui and Dr Belinda Guo at the University of Western Australia. The team are undertaking research on a new technique to see if they can detect which MPN patients may be at risk of progressing to leukaemia or marrow fibrosis. It is hoped this may ultimately provide an alternative to the current method of utilising bone marrow biopsies for the purpose of detecting the first signs of disease escape or progression. Although only a minority of MPN patients are affected, it is not currently known who this might affect or when this will occur. By the time symptoms appear, it is generally difficult to cure. Hence a predictor of progression may assist in providing treatment earlier and possibly providing cures.
The method the team will use is their own invention, and the one that won a Eureka Award (affectionately known as the “Oscars of Science”!) in 2018. As you will see from the Youtube video it is a flow cytometry method that enables the study thousands of cells to see if the cell-of-interest has the chromosome change that may predict progression.
We wish Prof Erber, and Drs Kathy Fuller, Henry Hui and Belinda Guo every success with their research and look forward to sharing their progress in the future.
Researchers at Queen’s University Belfast and the University of Aberdeen, invite you to take part in an online research study investigating the impact of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic on caregivers and patients with cancer, pre-cancerous conditions and rare diseases.
This survey is open to all patients and caregivers aged 18 years or older. To participate in this study, you will need to complete a short survey based on your own experiences. This survey should take around 20-30 minutes to complete. To access the survey please click HERE
Australian MPN patients are invited to take part in a research project called Living with MPN Fatigue. This project aims to improve the understanding of the human experience of MPN fatigue (being tired).
You are eligible to take part if you have an MPN or CML diagnosis, live in Australia and have experienced fatigue affecting what you are able to do during the last 6 months.
You are invited to fill in a survey about your fatigue experience. This survey does not need to be completed all at once, you may answer some questions and then return at a later time or date to continue, within 2 weeks after you started it.
Further details are below but use this link to participate in the study and for more information. https://redcap.link/mpnfatigue2020
We all have small numbers of circulating stem cells (CD34+). In MPNs, the numbers are higher than those who do not have an MPN. They further increase in number with progression to leukaemia and marrow fibrosis. The team is about to commence looking at a new approach using these CD34+ cells in the blood to see if they have changes in the chromosomes that may predict progression or change in status of the MPN. They have some support from a University grant to get this started, and have formed a collaboration with MPN haematologists and scientists in Belfast to include samples from their patients.
The method the team will use is their own invention, and the one that won a Eureka Award (affectionately known as the “Oscars of Science”!) in 2018 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AvLxCLkAJc). As you will see from the Youtube video it is a flow cytometry method that enables the study thousands of cells to see if the cell-of-interest has the chromosome change that may predict progression.
We are exceedingly fortunate to have researchers of such high calibre working on MPNs in Australia. MPN AA is raising funds to support their research. Let’s get behind them!
Please support this ground-breaking MPN research in Australia this Christmas, and donate via this link.
Thanks to all our donors who made it possible for Nathalie Cook and Ken Young of MPN AA to present a cheque today for $10,000 to Dr Cavan Bennett and haematologists A/Prof Kate Burbury & Dr Sant-Rayn Pasricha of Peter Mac and WEHI to support their exciting research into PV. We raised over $7000 in our End of financial Year fundraiser, and topped this up with previously donated funds to support this worthwhile research. We are so happy that this MPN research is being carried out in Australia, and are very thankful to the researchers.
