Issue Archive

In this issue of Blood, Voskaridou et al provide more compelling evidence that hydroxyurea improves survival in adults with severe sickle cell disease.¹  This comes at the centennial of the recognition of sickle cell disease in Western medicine. Considerable progress has been made in understanding the pathophysiology of this complex disease caused by a single nucleotide change in the β-globin gene that causes replacement of glutamic acid by valine.

In this issue of Blood, Gertz and colleagues present a retrospective study that analyzes progression-free survival and overall survival in 286 patients comparing those who did not reach a partial response or progressed during induction therapy with a regimen including thalidomide or lenalidomide to those who did achieve at least a partial response.

The study by Pennell et al in this issue of Blood reports the effect of the orally active iron chelator deferasirox on cardiac iron and function in patients with thalassemia major.

In this issue of Blood, Staron and colleagues reveal an unexpected and nonredundant role for gp96 in the early development of B and T cells that may help to better define the critical role of integrins in lymphopoiesis.¹ 

VEGF exhibits broad vascular functions by activation of its VEGFRs in endothelial cells. In this issue of Blood, Suehiro and colleagues show that VEGF-induced endothelial activities are mediated by activation of Egr-3 transcription factor and that Egr-3 is a potential therapeutic target for angiogenesis-related diseases.