ESUN

A Milestone

By Bruce Shriver, PhD
Editor-in-Chief, ESUN

Dear Readers,

I hope that you find this issue of ESUN interesting, informative, and useful. It marks an important milestone for us in our brief history. Here are some of the highlights:

Our First Bridge Article: Dr. R. Lor Randall has written our first "bridge article." It describes the Ewing’s Sarcoma Family of Tumors and appears in this issue of ESUN. It takes a significant amount of time to write an article such as this. I am grateful to Dr. Randall, an extremely busy surgeon and researcher, for finding the time to undertake this project and then work with me to achieve the result that you see in this issue. 

Our First Review Article: Moreover, we are publishing our first "review" article. Written by Dr. Margaret von Mehren, it reviews recent clinical trial studies using ET-743 to treat sarcoma. Again, as I am sure you will easily notice, it took a good deal of time to research and write this article and we are grateful to her for doing so and working with me. Both the Randall and von Mehren articles contain an extensive set of references, making them valuable to doctors, nurses, patients and caregivers alike.

Regular Columns:

• Dr. Mary Louise Keohan continues with her interesting series of Q&A columns. In the February issue of ESUN she discussed angiogenesis, in the April issue she discussed immunotherapy (both vaccine-based and antibody-based therapies), and in this issue, she discusses stem cell transplantation and high dose chemotherapy.
• The Clinical Trial News column complements the von Mehren and Keohan articles by abstracting a number of clinical trials that use stem cell transplantation as well as some employing ET-743. 
• Dr. Karen Albritton continues her discussion of various chemotherapeutic agents used in treating various sarcomas. In previous columns she discussed vincristine and then doxorubicin. In this issue she discusses cyclophosphamide and ifosfamide.
• The Journal Reviews column explores a number of the journals of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), which can prove useful to those of you who do ongoing research in the sarcoma literature. As is usual, the Research Corner column and the Odds and Ends column are packed with many useful links.
• Finally, we are also giving you a small peek at a new column, "A Caregiver’s Notes", which we will formally launch in the August 2004 issue of ESUN. This column, which will be written by caregiver Hana Pester, will contain numerous personal insights about caregiving and will be augmented with interviews, commentary, and suggestions of medical professionals involved in the care of cancer patients.

Please don’t forget to check out the Our Initiatives column and let us know what you think about the ESUN newsletter and our other initiatives. Lastly, I must thank Eva Mae Connell, whose careful copy editing of the first three issues of ESUN resulted in many corrections that made each issue more accurate and readable.