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Local Company Employees Band Together to Help Colleague, Other Cancer Patients at Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center

Scottsdale-Based GoVideo Donates Portable DVD Players to Oncology Unit; Employees Give Away Vacation Time to Help Long-Time Employee, Friend Kevin Petersen, Who Is Undergoing Treatment for Leukemia

SCOTTSDALE, AZ -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 06/16/2005 -- Employees of local consumer electronics firm, GoVideo, are joining together to support their long-time colleague and friend, Kevin Petersen, 34, who was recently diagnosed with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia and has been undergoing intense chemotherapy treatments at Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center in Phoenix. The employees have created several programs in an effort to help, including voluntarily "giving back" personal vacation days to Kevin to supplement his long-term disability leave.

Determined to make a difference, the employees also have set up a program through which GoVideo will donate portable DVD players to the Banner Health Foundation for cancer patients undergoing care in the oncology unit.

Originally diagnosed in mid-May, Petersen has been receiving a number of well wishers at his bedside including numerous fellow employees, many of whom took notice of the lack of personal entertainment available to the facility's long-term cancer patients. The employees created the portable DVD player donation program to address this need.

In addition, a number of DVD movie titles for the patients have been donated in honor of Petersen from several companies affiliated with GoVideo. Now patients residing in Petersen's unit on the facility's 12th floor have the option of comfortably viewing movies in the privacy of their hospital rooms while undergoing treatment. The unit is officially known as the City of Hope at Banner Good Samaritan Bone Marrow Transplantation Program.

"Kevin is an extremely important member of the GoVideo family," said Jonathan King, GoVideo's director of corporate relations. "Although we sell our products throughout the United States, we have a small number of employees, so this has been difficult for everyone here at our headquarters in Scottsdale. The employees came together and wanted to make a difference for the other patients too. Sometimes a great deal of good can emerge from misfortune, and this is just such an occasion."

Those who would like to make a monetary donation to the Banner Health Foundation or to donate DVD movies, please contact Karen A. Bisko, vice president of development for the Foundation, at (602) 239-2462, or via e-mail at [email protected].

About The Banner Health Foundation

All financial donations and gifts made to Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center are coordinated through the Banner Health Foundation, a philanthropic resource for Banner Health.

Providing an opportunity for donors to make a philanthropic investment in the mission of Banner Health, the Banner Health Foundation collects all private donations intended to help Banner Good Samaritan maintain the highest level of patient care.

Funds collected through the Banner Health Foundation are 100 percent tax deductible and support such medical programs as advanced cancer care, bone marrow transplants, cardiology and women's services. Additionally, programs including Alzheimer's disease research, school-based health clinics, nursing scholarships, medical education, rehabilitation and the Banner Poison Control Center are funded through the Banner Health Foundation.

Checks made payable and mailed to the Banner Health Foundation, will be directed to the facility and/or program of your choice. Please indicate your preference on the memo line of your check. The Banner Health Foundation accepts gifts via cash, check, credit card and in-kind donations.

About GoVideo

Celebrating over 20 years of excellence, GoVideo has introduced some of the most successful, innovative and easy-to-use products in the industry, including the DVD+VCR, Dual-Deck VCR, Networked DVD Player and DVD Recorder+VCR.

NOTE: GoVideo®, Rave-MP", Sensory Science®, CineVision", and California Audio Labs® are trademarks or registered trademarks of GoVideo. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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At GoVideo:
Jonathan King
Director of Corporate Relations
(480) 905-9623

SOURCE: GoVideo

New Type of Leukaemia Identified

ISLAMABAD, January 21 (Online): Some infants with a type of leukaemia called acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) respond poorly to therapy. Now researchers have found that these patients actually have a type of leukaemia that is distinct from ALL, paving the way, they say, for targeted treatments.

ALL is a cancer of cells that develop into white blood cells. It is more common among children than adults and accounts for more than half of all childhood leukaemia`s.

Researchers already knew that many ALL patients who respond poorly to treatment have a defect in the "mixed lineage`` gene, which is located on chromosome 11.

Now with the help of gene chip technology, Dr. Scott A. Armstrong of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, and colleagues have identified more than 1,000 genes that are expressed differently between ALL patients and patients with the mixed-lineage defect, suggesting it should be considered a distinct type of leukaemia.

Reporting in the advance online edition of Nature Genetics for December, Armstrong`s team suggests that these patients should be classified as having "mixed-lineage leukaemia`` (MLL) rather than ALL.

To determine whether MLL was a distinct form of leukemia, the researchers compared the expression of over 30,000 genes in 10 ALL samples and 17 MLL samples.

The investigators also compared genes expressed in ALL and MLL with those in another type of blood cancer called acute myelogenous leukaemia (AML); MLL cells have features similar to both ALL and AML cells. But they concluded that the diseases were "three distinct entities.``

"We expected to find that a few genes would be different between MLL and ALL, but the number we found immediately suggested to us that we were dealing with a different type of leukaemia,`` Armstrong says.

"This is exciting,`` Armstrong continued. "It`s not your standard ALL, and this is probably why these leukaemia`s don`t respond well to ALL therapy.``

According to Armstrong, a physician cannot tell an MLL patient from an ALL patient without sophisticated genetic tests, since the symptoms are the same, but "now that we know that MLL is distinct, we can start directing treatment with that in mind.``

He added, "It won`t immediately change the way we do things, but our ultimate goal is to develop new therapies based on the genes expressed in different types of leukaemia--ones that are less toxic and more specific.``

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