March 5, 2003
Cancer
Researcher Receives Ann Landers Research Fund Award
Northwestern University researcher Seema Singhal, M.D., has been
named the recipient of a $200,000 Ann Landers Research Fund Award
for her investigations into the genetic abnormalities associated
with multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that afflicts over 45,000
people in the United States. About 15,000 new cases of multiple
myeloma are diagnosed annually.
Singhal is professor of medicine at the Feinberg School of Medicine
and director of the myeloma program in the division of hematology/oncology.
She also is a researcher at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer
Center of Northwestern University and a staff physician at Northwestern
Memorial Hospital.
The columnist Ann Landers, whose real name was Eppie Lederer,
died of multiple myeloma in June 2002.
The two-year
Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation grant to Singhal is funded
by a $100,000 contribution from the Chicago Tribune Foundation
and a matching $100,000 gift from Lederer’s daughter, Margo
Howard, through a research fund she established after her mother’s
death.
Singhal, who received the Ann Landers Research Fund Award at
a dinner held on March 4 in Chicago, is a leading authority on
the use of novel therapies, including hematopoietic stem cell transplantation,
to treat myeloma. She also is studying gene function in myeloma
and exploring the use of adult stem cells to repair heart and central
nervous system damage. |