Robert Hromas: Fighting back against cancer

Published: Wednesday, October 22, 2014 at 6:01 a.m. Last Modified: Tuesday, October 21, 2014 at 2:28 p.m.

On Thursday, hundreds of people will gather on the northern lawn of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium to walk in honor of loved ones who have survived or have succumbed to some form of leukemia or lymphoma.

These people walk as a way to cope, to remember those who have fought these cancers, and to raise funds to fight blood diseases. The walk is sponsored by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Northern and Central Florida, and I am honored to serve as chairman of the event.

I understand this need to do something to raise funds to fight these debilitating diseases.

In 2005, my father, Les Hromas, PhD, was diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML). As a faculty member at Purdue University, he is well-known for having taught three of the U.S. astronauts, including Neil Armstrong. He is also known as the "Father of Re-Entry Physics," famous for developing the equation that calculated the re-entry of all space craft (such as the shuttle) in order to prevent them from burning up in the atmosphere.

Such a man does not go down easily. Fortunately, after he was diagnosed with CML, he was started on Imatinib, which was new at the time, and was developed with funds provided by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. My father would not be alive today without it.

Since 1949, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society has raised and contributed more than $1 billion to fight blood diseases. As a frontline researcher at UF Health, I am honored to be the recipient of an LLS translational research award. This provides significant funding to develop approaches that can change the standard of care for patients with blood cancers.

Specifically, we are studying a particular protein that may be responsible for causing secondary Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) in patients who have received chemotherapy for other types of cancers. The research may help identify those patients who are more likely to develop secondary AML before chemotherapy treatment is administered. Better, it may provide a way to prevent those secondary cancers from happening in the first place.

If you know someone who has fought or is fighting a blood disease, please come out and walk on Thursday evening or support someone who is.

Your time and money will be well spent. It is one way for fighting back against these cancers, of standing strong and never giving in to their onslaught.

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Robert Hromas: Fighting back against cancer