Researcher optimistic about cures for all blood cancers

Chris Meehan, reporter for Kalamazoo Gazette, reports on very encouraging news coming from researchers at the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (the beneficiary of my fund raising effort).

Notable quotes:

"A goal of curing most types of blood cancer by 2015 is realistic and attainable"

"The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society awarded about $60 million in grants to scientists in 2006."

And how about this for dramatic improvement:

Before Gleevec was introduced more than five years ago... about 50 percent of patients diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia every year did not survive for five years.

Today, because of the drug, which kills cancer cells without also killing healthy cells, 95 percent of the patients with the disease are still alive at the five-year mark...

While no one treatment or drug offers a panacea, real progress is being made. Amazing to think we can speak seriously about "cancer" and "cures" in the same breath.