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All of us in cancer research, as well as clinicians, our first goal in treating a patient is get them into remission, which means all evidence of cancer goes away. The second step is making sure that disease never comes back again.

Hi. My name is Tom Loughran.

I'm director of the University of Virginia Cancer Center. My research interest is on LGL leukemia. What I'd like to do today is tell you a little bit about the illness, why I think it would be important for you to see me here, if at all possible, and then give you some idea of our ongoing research in this illness. I discovered LGL leukemia back in Seattle when I was a fellow about 30 years ago. It's a fairly rare disease.

It's characterized by having too many LGL cells, which are clonal.

Clonal means that one cell became abnormal, and then it copies itself over and over again. Our patients become sick by having either too low blood counts or having autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.

Our LGL Leukemia Registry is really a worldwide registry to capture clinical information about our patients. Our research is very comprehensive. It's organized around the registry itself, our laboratory, and then clinical trials.

So in conclusion, the overarching goal of our research program is to understand the pathogenesis or causes of LGL leukemia much better so that we can define the illness better, but most importantly, come up with better treatment options. Right now, we have medicines that act broadly to suppress the immune system. They are very effective in controlling LGL leukemia, but so far, unfortunately to date, we have no therapy that can cure this illness.

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