Interesting article from Sunday Times UK

[Guest guest]

Hi,

Below is an excellent article from yesterday's Sunday Times (UK)

about Prof. Tessa Holyoake and her dedication to seeking out a cure

via stem cells for CML and she hopes for many types of cancer. Its

good to know she and her team are so devoted and that she recognizes

we patients are ready and able to help any way we can from petitions

to funds.

dx 11/98

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article4491852.

ece

Sunday TimesAugust 10, 2008

Tessa Holyoake leads the fight for a cure

A new leukaemia research centre will provide a vital resource for the

professor and her team in their battle to beat leukaemia

Gillian Bowditch

Tessa Holyoake, Glasgow University's lithe, 45-year-old professor of

experimental haematology, tipped by American billionaire and

philanthropist Rockefeller as a future Nobel laureate, is not

given to hyperbole. She has the inherent caution of the research

scientist and the compassion of one who knows how easily careless

superlatives can raise and then dash the expectations of patients for

whom hope is the only remaining therapy.

When she talks about " a cure " for cancer, or more specifically

chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML), she makes it sound as if she has

mislaid her car key. It's there somewhere; it's just a case of

finding it.

If the past success is anything to go by, Holyoake, director of the

new O'Gorman Leukaemia Research Centre at Gartnavel Hospital, is

entitled to her quiet confidence. Her work on cancer stem cells and

their role in triggering cancers previously in remission is not

merely pioneering; it has allowed CML, a relatively rare cancer, to

act as a Trojan horse, undermining the defences of a disease that has

defeated physicians for centuries and which kills one in three of us.

Already many of the UK's 25,000 CML sufferers have seen their life

expectancy increase dramatically because of her research. That

research is now being applied to other cancers, with similarly

promising results. Such is the demand to work with her that she can

receive up to 130 applications for each research fellowship.

So why has she has spent the last few months trying to find cleaners

for her office, chivvying maintenance people, climbing mountains to

raise sponsorship and chasing gardeners to lay turf?

Holyoake's struggle to realise her dream of developing a global

centre of excellence for leukaemia research in Glasgow, where she

trained as a medical student in the 1980s, is as depressing as it is

inspiring. She has succeeded against the odds but she and her team of

highly trained scientists have had to do virtually everything

themselves — from raising the £2.7m needed for the new building to

clearing up the rubble outside.

It is an indictment of the inefficiencies and myopia of a National

Health Service and a university that stand to benefit greatly from

her work. " It's taken a while, " she says. " It's been a hassle. Even

something as simple as getting the toilets cleaned was a struggle.

We've had to do most of it ourselves. "

When the project was put on hold for 18 months to accommodate yet

another NHS review, she seriously thought of upping sticks and taking

her expertise elsewhere.

" I wondered if it would stall completely at that stage, " she

says. " Everybody was backing off from discussing it with me and I was

getting very frustrated. " The support of her consultant colleagues

helped keep her in Glasgow.

The fundraising campaign for the new centre, named after a 14-year-

old patient who died, was launched in 2002 by a now-deceased CML

patient, Johanna MacVicar, and the actor Dougray , who played a

CML sufferer in the film Ripley's Game. None of the money for the new

building has come from the ish executive.

Instead, Holyoake and her team have climbed, pedalled and abseiled at

weekends to raise funds. Patients and their families have raised

hundreds of thousands of pounds to build and equip it, charities have

opened their cheque books and Glasgow University alumni have dug

deep. There is barely a piece of kit in the lab which doesn't have a

plaque on it, acknowledging a sponsor.

It's hard to imagine many professors of Holyoake's reputation going

to the lengths she has to secure her vision. In June, she and her

husband, Greenock-based GP Andy Malloch, completed the gruelling

Three Peaks Challenge (climbing Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon

in less than 24 hours) to raise £20,000. Next weekend she will cycle

26 miles in the Cycle Glasgow challenge.

While civil servants, university bureaucrats and politicians have

done little to advance her cause, one man was prepared to back her.

Rockefeller, the great-grandson of D Rockefeller,

America's first billionaire and the founder of one of the most

powerful dynasties in the US, has more than a philanthropic interest

in Holyoake's work. A 59-year-old family doctor and medical lecturer

from Portland, Maine, he was diagnosed with CML in 2000.

He owes his life to the first of the new " miracle " cancer drugs,

Glivec. Holyoake carried out pioneering clinical trials in Scotland

on the drug in 2000. Rockefeller quickly realised her significance.

" Even then it was clear to me that among all the world's researchers,

Tessa stood out as offering the greatest promise of a medical cure, "

he said at the centre's opening this summer. He and his family have

donated the thick end of $300,000 (£156,000) to the centre.

Holyoake plays down Rockefeller's description of her as a potential

Nobel laureate. " I cannot see how the work I do could ever be worthy

of a Nobel prize, " she says. Nevertheless, Rockefeller, whose family

founded the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, is not a man

given to overstatement and Holyoake's team is the only CML group he

is currently funding.

Her first contact with the philanthropist, whose family have been

power-brokers to successive American presidents, came via an

unsolicited e-mail.

" He didn't introduce himself and there was nothing in the e-mail

address to say who he was but he was asking some incredibly detailed

questions about a paper we'd published identifying stem cells in

leukaemia, " she recalls. Rockefeller's role goes far beyond that of

benefactor. Following his diagnosis in 2000, he retired from general

practice to work with CML patient groups, helping them to interpret

the exciting new research developments.

" These patient groups and their websites became incredibly powerful, "

says Holyoake. " The patients were the major reason the pharmaceutical

companies — first Ciba-Geigy and then Novartis — developed Glivec

beyond the trial stage. Initially they thought it was too small a

market and not financially viable. But Rockefeller and the patients

signed a massive petition and basically railroaded it through. "

The two first met in Orlando, Florida, in 2001. " Even though I knew

by then that his name was Rockefeller, I still hadn't realised he was

one of the Rockefellers, " she says. " He was very down-to-earth. I

told him what we were doing and about a month later he e-mailed me

and said he wanted to give some money to the fund-raising effort. "

Rockefeller sees the potential for Holyoake's work to have a knock-on

effect on all solid tumours in which stem cells are important. Since

2000, there have been papers identifying stem cells for brain cancer,

prostate cancer and breast cancer. Research into the solid tumours is

now following the methodology developed by Holyoake and others and

promising new drugs are in development.

Her tenacity and focus are absolute, partly because she doesn't have

the distraction of young children. " I had surgery in 2000 for a

variety of reasons, " she says, " so I can't have children but I'm not

sure that we hadn't made a subconscious decision by then not to have

them. I'm not sure if it is significant, but of the 17 group leaders

at the Beatson Institute \<NO> in Glasgow\], only one is female. Even

in the medical faculty, there aren't that many female professors. "

Leukaemia research interests her partly because it isn't a lifestyle

disease. " Many chronic illnesses are often down to smoking or lack of

exercise. But people with leukaemia have done nothing to cause their

problem, so I suppose I feel more inclined to do something to help

them. "

She is now undertaking clinical trials into the next generation of

Glivec-type drugs and working on Glivec-resistant cancer stem cells.

" We want to see what we can do to hit the stem cells so that we can

cure the disease, " she says. " In 2006 we had no drugs or drug

combinations that targeted CML stem cells. There are now eight or

nine groups around the world which all seem to have something. It's

now a case of finding the best. It's moving very quickly. "

Time is everything. There are new drugs coming through but the

testing process is slow, laborious and old-fashioned. The new drugs

are often taken in combination but each pill has to be tested

individually before being tested again in combination. It can take

years.

" That is inhibiting us now, " she says. " It's taking too long to get

these things out. What we need is a short cut for testing drugs in

the lab. There needs to be joined-up thinking between industry and

academia. "

Holyoake's drive, combined with turbo-charged patient power and the

generosity of individuals, has made the new centre and its pioneering

research possible. But if I were a patient with CML, I would be

furious to know that the leading experts in the condition had to

waste precious time chasing up builders. Holyoake is used to dealing

with blood, but for the past 18 months it's been blood, sweat and

tears.