Mayo Clinic receives $11 million grant from NCI to study cancer survivorship

Mayo Clinic announced today that it has received a five-year, $11 million grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to study survivorship in patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). The Lymphoma Epidemiology of Outcomes Cohort Study will enroll 12,000 patients with NHL. The study will follow these patients for long-term prognosis and survivorship.

"With an increasing number of Americans living with NHL, we need to find new and better ways to improve the length and quality of their lives," says the study's principle investigator, James Cerhan, M.D., Ph.D., who is an epidemiologist at Mayo Clinic.

NHL is a cancer that originates in the lymphatic system, the disease-fighting network spread throughout the body. In NHL, tumors develop from lymphocytes—a type of white blood cell.

According to the NCI, about 70,000 cases of NHL will be diagnosed in the U.S. in 2015. The incidence of NHL has been increasing since 1950, although, over the past two decades, the rate of increase has slowed, and survival rates have improved. These trends have led to an increasing number of NHL survivors - most recently estimated at 550,000.

The grant involves collaboration among multiple institutions, including lymphoma experts from Mayo Clinic, the University of Iowa, Emory University/Grady Health System, MD Anderson Cancer Center, the University of Wisconsin, Cornell University, and the University of Miami Health System/Jackson Memorial Hospital.

Provided by Mayo Clinic