I would like to thank “Beat Leukemia Association” for the fellowship received in December 2013, which permitted me to work at the Hematology and BMT Unit in Cremona Hospital over the last 8 months, under the supervision of Dr. Francesco Lanza.
In particular, in this period, I performed a clinical and experimental research activity, carrying out specific tasks related to my data-manager position, such as the management of clinical protocols, both observational and experimental ones, activated in the clinical ward. Furthermore, I worked to the following items: the scheduling of subject visits for patients enrolled in clinical trials; the clinical data entry in the electronic Case Report Forms (CRFs); the biological samples processing (peripheral blood, bone marrow, plasma, serum), with the preparation of slides from peripheral blood, necessary for hematological, immunophenotypical, biochemical and genetical studies. The clinical protocols, which I’m still taking care, are related to hematological malignancies such as acute myeloid leukemia, multiple myeloma and chronic myeloid leukemia. The main aim of some of these clinical protocols is the assessment of the efficacy of the experimental drug in comparison with standard therapy or placebo in the patient observed, other than looking at overall survival; in other cases the aim was to monitor the effect the of experimental or standard treatment on the quality of life of the patients examined.
Moreover, I created a database to collect information about all patients treated with a mobilisation regimen in order to collect hematopoietic stem cells intended for autologous stem cell transplantation. The information recorded has been correlated with the disease category, the therapeutic history, the procedure for the hematopoietic stem cell mobilisation and the outcome of the CD34+ cells collection, as well as data related to the transplantation procedure, such as platelets and neutrophils engraftment. In particular, I retrieved data on 67 patients affected by onco-hematological diseases (multiple myeloma, follicular and mantle non Hodgkin lymphoma, Hodgkin lymphoma, diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, acute myeloid leukemia, T-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma). Having data organized in an electronic database is a crucial aspect of clinical practice and research activity; in fact, it represents a functional tool for epidemiological, scientific and statistical analyses. Regarding that, the collection of these data has allowed us to take part to an European multicenter project (coordinated from the EBMT Society), which is still ongoing, aimed to assess the correlation between the number of reinfused CD34+ cells and the kinetic of platelets engraftment in patients affected by lymphoma and multiple myeloma transplanted with hematopoietic stem cells. The data analysis is still in progress.
Similarly to the activity described above, I put effort in the registration of clinical reports of patient affected by malignant lymphoma, in the “Rete Ematologica Lombarda (REL)”, which is an electronic platform that allows to all hospital sites in Lombardia to connect each other. The purpose of this tool is to offer people/patients the management of the disease through the sharing of the best diagnostic and therapeutic approaches, regardless of place of residence.
In the matter of laboratory activity, in past months I co-worked with the colleagues of cytofluorimetry laboratory to the realization of a biological specimen bank (BIOBANK). The samples are collected from newly diagnosed patients for acute myeloid leukemia, myelodysplasia and multiple myeloma. For this purpose, cryopreservation protocols of mononuclear cells separated from peripheral blood and bone marrow blood were developed. A biobank implemented over time will be a major source of material for molecular studies on DNA and RNA. Once collected a good number of samples, it will be possible to carry out studies to investigate the correlation between the expression levels of candidate genes and disease phenotypes, disease evolution or response to a specific therapy.
With regards
Dr. Paola Brambilla
www.beat-leukemia.org
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