In Memoriam: Dottie Thomas, a story of scientific love

About a month ago, Dottie Thomas died at her home in Seattle, Washington. She was 92. You probably aren't familiar with Dottie Thomas or her life, but you may be familiar with her work! Along with her husband (and Nobel laureate Don), she was an integral part of the team that proved that bone marrow transplantation could cure leukemia and a host of other blood related disorders. I couldn't possibly detail her life history as well as this summary by Diane Mapes, but here is a summary of a life of love and science.

Figure 1: Cells of the blood, which come from stem cells in the bone marrow

Imagine it. The University of Texas at Austin, 1940. A rare snowstorm finds its way to the Lonestar state and shuts down campus for the day. A young Dottie Martin, a freshman journalism major, takes part in a campus snowball fight and nails a senior chemistry student in the face. That man was Don Thomas, who she would fall in love with and marry in 1942. They were married for 70 years until his death in 2012.

Throughout her life, she relented tirelessly with her husband Don at the University of Washington to show that bone marrow transplantation could be a highly effective treatment. She served as the chief administrator for the Clinical Research Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center for 15 years and was a devoted scientist, editor, and mother. Their research has saved thousands of people around the world, and her husband went on to win the Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1990.

"They were incredible workaholics - working 80 and 90 hour weeks -- but they were also incredibly good parents. Mom always had time for us no matter how busy she was. She went to the PTA meetings. She did the macaroni art." -Dr. Elaine Thomas, Dottie's daughter

The procedure mentioned above removes bone marrow from a healthy donor and gives it to someone without healthy bone marrow. Bone marrow is very important, as it contains very important cells known as hematopoeitic stem cells. These are the cells that will eventually transform into the cells in your blood. Having healthy stem cells is the key to having healthy blood cells! The treatment can be used in patients with leukemia, lymphoma, and other disorders of the bone marrow.

For the full story on the life of Dottie Thomas, click on the hyperlink above. In the meantime, I encourage you all to enter yourselves into the national bone marrow donation registry at http://bethematch.org/. 360 people a day are diagnosed with cancers of the blood - will you be someone's cure?

Detecting cancer, one CTC at a time

In honor of breast cancer awareness month, I've been scouring science headlines around the internet to find really interesting, clever, and unique approaches to fighting all sorts of cancer. I stumbled on some fantastic research this morning that really piqued my interest; I hope it does the same for you! The early diagnosis of cancer makes a dramatic difference in the prognosis of patients. Take, for example, breast cancer. Below is a chart showing 5 year survival rates of breast cancer patients relative to the stage at which the cancer was diagnosed:

Figure 1: The 5-year relative survival rates among breast cancer patients

The contrast between Stage I and IV survival is pretty stark, as you can see! The cause of this jump is a phenomenon known as metastasis, which is cancer's ability to spread its tumors from the primary site to remote organs. In fact, the majority of breast cancer fatalities occur due to these remote tumors (in the bone, liver, etc) rather than solely cancer in the breast. This is a defining feature of Stage IV cancers.

Detecting these metastatic tumors has been a challenge, but recent advances have allowed scientists and clinicians to detect circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the blood. This allows us to study and monitor cancer in a noninvasive manner, which is critical in ensuring that the cancer treatment process is as painless as possible. Aceto et al. published a paper in Cell describing a very interesting discovery in the nature of these cells. As it turns out, the cells that are the most successful in establishing remote tumors travel in clusters, rather than in isolation.

Figure 2: A schematic showing CTC mediated tumor establishment. Credit: Aceto et al. 2014

These cells express a protein called plakoglobin, a cell adhesion protein which presumably allows the cells to remain in contact with one another until they reach their destination. Traveling in this way seems to provide a protective advantage, as the scientists also noted that solitary tumor cells suffered much higher rates of cell death. Patients with high levels of this protein in their cancer cells had a much shorter metastasis-free survival time.

Researchers hope that with this new knowledge, our monitoring of cancer patients will become much more effective. For example, if a clinician notices that levels of plakoglobin and/or clustered CTCs are rising in his/her patient, that may call for a more aggressive treatment regimen. It may also warrant a closer examination of the genetics of these clusters, as metastatic tumors are notorious for having different genetics than their parent tumors, which may partially explain why some chemotherapies eventually stop working.

For more information, check out the full paper in the first hyperlink above. The more you know!