Waldenström's Macroglobulinemia

This book sheds new light on clinical, biological and therapeutic data on the rare disease Waldenström's Macroglobulinemia (WM) with the participation of widely-recognized experts, involved in this field. It represents the efforts of physicians, scientists and patients, all around the world, to better understand and cure this rare disease.

Considerable advances in the diagnosis, treatment indications, response criteria, prognostic factors and treatment options have been made since Dr Jan Waldenström first reported this 'new syndrome' 70 years ago. Particularly instrumental in advancing of our understanding of WM have been the eight international workshops devoted to this disease. New, exciting molecular data have recently been reported, allowing us to revisit the oncogenic events leading to WM B-cell proliferation and to use newly available compounds targeting oncogenic pathways.

Véronique Leblond, Professor in Hematology, is the head of the department of Hematology at Pitié Salpêtrière Hospital, Paris, France. She is the chair of the 'French Cooperative Group on Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia and Waldenström's Macroglobulinemia: FCG CLL-WM' including more than 90 centers in France and Belgium. She is responsible for a rare tumor network (K-VIROGREF) dedicated to the management of transplant recipients with virus-induced tumors and funded by the French national Institute for cancer in 2012. The team historically focuses on chronic B-cell lymphoproliferative disorders, amyloidosis, on ocular and CNS lymphoma and on lymphoproliferations in immunosuppressed patients (HIV, organ-transplanted patients). She is the head of GRECHY, affiliated to the PhD school ED394 'Physiology & Physio-pathology'. Steven Treon is the Director of the Bing Center for Waldenström's Research and an attending physician for medical oncology, at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital, in Boston, Massachusetts. He is also an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston, and is the Chair of the Waldenström's Macroglobulinemia Clinical Trials Group. Dr Treon's main research interests focus on understanding the genetic basis and pathogenesis of Waldenström's macroglobulinemia and the development of therapeutics for this malignancy. Meletios A. Dimopoulos, MD is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Clinical Therapeutics at the University Athens School of Medicine, Athens, Greece. He is a member of numerous scientific societies and has authored more than 650 publications (April 2013) in peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Dimopoulos serves on the Scientific Advisory Boards of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, of the International Myeloma Foundation, of the International Waldenstrom's Macroglobulinemia Foundation and he is a member of the Board of the European Myeloma Network.