Fun and Informative

Last night Nick and I attended the Kaleidoscope of Hope ( KOH) Foundation's 2011 Spring Gala. It was wonderful getting a chance to see all my KOH friends. The food at the Hamilton Park Hotel was delicious and the service wonderful. We cheered the fact that KOH has awarded over $2 million to research in the past 11 years. We had fun dancing and looking at the silent auction items and celebrating the Founders Award presentation to the Castle Family for their long time support of KOH.

The informative part of the evening was the time I spent talking to this year's research grant awardees Dr. Andrea McCollum and Dr David Hyman.

Dr. McCollum is a post doc fellow at the NCI in Maryland. She works in the lab of Dr Elise Kohn. The research to be supported by KOH is "BAG3 as a predictive marker for sensitivity to chemotherapy and G2/M-targeted agents". Dr. McCollum will be looking at a gene to predict where or not a women's ovarian cancer will be responsive to carboplatin or other targeted agents.

Dr Hyman 's research "Mitigating acquired carboplatin hypersensitivity in ovarian cancer: a randomized trial of 30-minute versus 3-hour carboplatin infusion schedule with assessment of cost effectiveness." was the second young investigator research award presentation. Having experienced a carboplatin allergic reaction I was happy to have the opportunity to discuss the difference between his clinical trial design and the desensitization that other researchers have studied.

It is the support of research by organizations like KOH that will help us answer the many questions we have about why some women's cancer ovarian cancer responds to carboplatin and others don not and how to deliver carboplatin safely to more women. Sometimes we need to think outside the box to find an answer.

Dee

Every Day is a Blessing! I am blessed with the opportunity to support KOH.