Editorial

Dear Readers,

Here are some of the highlights of the October issue of ESUN, which I hope you find interesting, informative, and useful:

Dr. Mark C. Gebhardt and Dr. Peter J. Buecker have written our third "bridge article". They discuss liposarcoma in some detail and give an extensive set of references to articles dealing with this disease. I am grateful to them for finding the time to undertake this project and then work with me to achieve the results that you see in this issue. For those readers not familiar with our series of "bridge articles", please click here.

The Clinical Trial News column complements Drs. Gebhardt and Buecker’s liposarcoma article as describes several clinical trials that accept liposarcoma patients. Importantly, it also discusses several immunotherapy studies, both vaccine-based and monoclonal antibody-based.

Dr. Crystal Mackall and Dr. Javed Khan give an excellent introduction to gene profiling and microarray technology in their article, Gene Profiling: Unlocking the inner workings of sarcoma cells.

Sharon Anderson reports on a project, Researchers need leiomyosarcoma (LMS) tissue samples for collaborative microarray study that complements the Gene Profiling article quite nicely. This project could act as a role model for similar projects for other types of sarcoma.

A brief essay, Healing and Hope, written by Selma Schimmel, a survivor of both breast and ovarian cancer gives those of you who have not visited our Journeys page, a wonderful introduction to the type of content you will find there.

One again caregiver Hana Pester gives some well thought out and useful advice in her article, Guiding the River: A Caregiver’s Guide to Beginning Treatment.

We have recently reorganized and updated our extensive set of annotated links for various types of online resources. Please visit our links subweb and send us feedback on this effort.

As usual, the Drug News column, the Research Corner column and the Odds & Ends column are full of interesting and useful abstracts and comments.

Finally, and this is very important, we announce our participation in Cycle Zydeco 2005 in the Our Initiatives column.

Best regards,

Bruce Shriver

Editor-in-Chief, ESUN