Erik Ranheim: University of Wisconsin Advantages

UW has some advantages in, well any cancer research, but particularly lymphoma, because one, we have a huge array of basic science people that can feed knowledge into and provide sort of fodder for translational research and that includes not only what you would normally expect like biochemist or protein biologist or cell biologist but also engineers. You can use nanotechnology and engineering knowledge to mimic the in the body situation for lymphoma cells or normal stem cells etc. In addition unlike some of the major research universities on the coasts which are surrounded by tertiary care centers, the University of Wisconsin really draws patients with lymphoma and other diseases to Madison and so in that sense we actually get a huge array of interesting and unique cases which lends itself well to recruiting pathologists, recruiting clinicians, but also we simply have enough material, starting material to do the kind of science we want to do. In some places despite their excellent academic reputation and excellent faculty their really limited in terms of where they can draw patients from or they tend to draw very peculiar and difficult cases that have failed treatment elsewhere and therefore may not be representative of what we normally see in the run of the mill lymphoma patient. We’ve developed a really excellent website in collaboration with our partners and that’s at www.forwardlymphoma.org.