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Community, friends coming to aid of leukemia victim

By JUDY JENKINS, Gleaner staff

November 24, 2004 - Mama was right. What goes around does come around. The proof of that is particularly evident in the case of a local special education teacher who is fighting her second battle with acute myelogenous leukemia at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Sarah Hurt, 46, is one of those people who draws comments like these from family, from friends and from co-workers at Spottsville Elementary School:

"Sarah is a wonderful, wonderful person and has a very strong faith," says Spottsville School counselor Lynn Dawson. "When you need anything, you can count on Sarah."

"Sarah is an amazing person," says the teacher's good friend Emma Todd, the assistant director at Marsha's Place. "She gives 150 percent of herself to her students. Any of their parents will vouch for that. She's a beautiful person."

"How would I describe my mother?" asks Sarah's 22-year-old daughter, Lindsey Sepp. "She's outgoing and giving. She loves to help others. She's funny, too, and her students get a kick out of her. She's a strong, strong Christian, and that's what's seeing her through."

Sarah has helped others, and now the favor is being returned.

As of Monday afternoon, 175 of her fellow teachers in the public school system have indicated they will have a blood test to determine if they could be a bone marrow match for Sarah, who needs a bone marrow transplant to strengthen her chances for a full recovery.

By now, it's likely many more teachers have responded to the e-mail that explained Sarah's situation and asked if they'd have that simple test.

And they aren't the only ones. I'm also told that some Brenntag employees have volunteered to be tested.

Sarah completes a 10-day chemotherapy course Friday, and is expected to go into remission. That period of remission following chemo is the "window" of opportunity for a bone marrow transplant.

Sarah's family members have been tested to see if they can be donors, but they don't match enough key factors to be candidates for that procedure. Nor is there a match on the international bone marrow registries.

Ms. Todd, who is coordinating the search for an ideal donor, says that before testing can be done, it's necessary to raise about $5,000, which will be matched by the National Bone Marrow Foundation. Each individual test, Emma said, costs $65 and at least 150 people need to be tested. That's $9,750.

Brainstorming is taking place to decide on fundraisers for that project, but the public can also help by donating to the Sarah Sepp Hurt Fund at Ohio Valley National Bank. That money is earmarked for the tests, which will bring special techs from the Brown Cancer Center in Louisville to Henderson. Testing will be done at either First Baptist Church or The Heart Group offices.

Ed Hurt, Sarah's husband of four years, said her spirit is strong and Lindsey said Sarah is deeply touched by the outpouring of support for her. "She can't understand how so many people want to help her." Lindsey, a psychology major, graduated from Transylvania last spring. Sarah's younger daughter, Allison Sepp, 19, is a sophomore at UK.

Lindsey said two former Henderson residents, Tammy and Brad Lipsey, are living in Franklin, Tenn., near Nashville and have generously opened their home to the family.

Sarah was initially diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia (AML) -- one of four categories of leukemia -- in March 2003 following a period of fever and fatigue that she'd thought was probably flu. She had chemotherapy and went into a remission that lasted until this month.

AML is a malignant disease of the bone marrow and blood characterized by the uncontrolled accumulation of blood cells. Each year, according to the national Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, there are about 11,920 new cases of AML diagnosed in the U.S.

Thanks largely to bone marrow transplants, the 5-year survival rate for leukemia has more than tripled and is now at the 46 percent mark. Currently, there are nearly 188,000 Americans living with leukemia.

By coincidence, November is National Bone Marrow Month.

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Sarah's church, New Harvest Church, is working on fund-raising ideas. If you'd like to help in some way, call Emma Todd at 826-9674 or 826-4936.

REVLIMID(R) (lenalidomide) New Drug Application Accepted for Review by FDA

New Drug Application Based on Phase II Trial (MDS-003) in Myelodysplastic Syndromes Patients with Deletion 5q Chromosomal Abnormality

SUMMIT, N.J., June 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Celgene Corporation (NASDAQ: CELG) announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has formally accepted for review the Company's New Drug Application (NDA) for REVLIMID. The REVLIMID NDA is seeking approval as a targeted treatment for transfusion-dependent myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS) patients with deletion 5q chromosomal abnormality. A review date will be communicated to Celgene in approximately two weeks.

The NDA submission was based primarily upon the safety and efficacy results of a multi-center Phase II trial of 148 MDS patients with deletion 5q chromosomal abnormality and supplemented by supportive data from two additional MDS trials. The MDS-003 data were recently presented during a plenary session at the May 2005 meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

"We are pleased with the FDA filing of our REVLIMID NDA, as a potential treatment for MDS patients with deletion 5q chromosomal abnormality," said Graham Burton, M.D., SVP, Regulatory Affairs and pharmacovigilance.

About REVLIMID(R)
REVLIMID is a member of a new class of novel immunomodulatory drugs, or IMiDs(R). Celgene is evaluating treatments with REVLIMID for a broad range of hematology and oncology conditions, including; multiple myeloma, the malignant blood cell disorders known as myelodysplastic syndromes, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, as well as solid tumor cancers. REVLIMID affects multiple intracellular biological pathways. The pipeline of IMiDs, including REVLIMID, is covered by a comprehensive intellectual property estate of U.S. and foreign issued and pending patent applications including composition-of-matter and use patents.

REVLIMID is not approved by the FDA or any other regulatory agencies as a treatment in any indication and is currently being evaluated in clinical trials for efficacy and safety for future regulatory applications.

About Myelodysplastic Syndromes
Myelodysplastic syndromes are a group of hematologic malignancies that affect approximately 300,000 people worldwide. Myelodysplastic syndromes occur when blood cells remain in an immature or "blast" stage within the bone marrow and never develop into mature cells capable of performing their necessary functions. Eventually, the bone marrow may be filled with blast cells suppressing normal cell development. According to the American Cancer Society, 10,000 to 20,000 new cases of MDS are diagnosed each year in the United States, with mean survival rates ranging from approximately six months to six years for the different classifications of MDS. MDS patients must often rely on blood transfusions to manage symptoms of anemia and fatigue until they develop life-threatening iron overload and/or toxicity, thus underscoring the critical need for new therapies targeting the cause of the condition rather than simply managing its symptoms.

About Deletion 5q Chromosomal Abnormality
Chromosomal (cytogenetic) abnormalities are detected in more than half of patients with myelodysplastic syndrome, and involve a deletion in all or part of one or more specific chromosomes. The most common cytogenetic abnormalities in MDS are deletions in the long arm of chromosomes 5, 7, and 20. Another common abnormality is an extra copy of chromosome 8. A deletion involving the 5q chromosome may be involved in 20 to 30% of all MDS patients. The World Health Organization has also recently identified a unique subset of MDS patients with a "5q- Syndrome" where the only chromosomal abnormality is a specific portion of the 5q chromosome.

About Celgene
Celgene Corporation, headquartered in Summit, New Jersey, is an integrated global biopharmaceutical company engaged primarily in the discovery, development and commercialization of innovative therapies for the treatment of cancer and inflammatory diseases through gene and protein regulation. For more information, please visit the Company's website at http://www.celgene.com.

This release contains certain forward-looking statements which involve known and unknown risks, delays, uncertainties and other factors not under the Company's control, which may cause actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from the results, performance or other expectations implied by these forward-looking statements. These factors include results of current or pending research and development activities, actions by the FDA and other regulatory authorities, and those factors detailed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission such as 10K, 10Q and 8K reports.

SOURCE Celgene Corporation
Web Site: http://www.celgene.com

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