Help Conquer Blood Diseases Worldwide
Your gift to the ASH Foundation fuels innovative research, education, and programs that move hematology forward. This impact comes to life in the PETAL Consortium, an ASH award recipient and first-of-its-kind global network dedicated to transforming care for people with peripheral T-cell lymphoma (PTCL), a rare and aggressive blood cancer.
The ASH Foundation + PETAL Consortium
The American Society of Hematology has supported the PETAL Consortium with Hematology Inclusion Pathway and Research awards over the last three years. Dr. Makoto Iwasaki, recipient of the ASH Global Research Award for 2024-2026, says, "For the PETAL Consortium, the award has been transformative."
The ASH Global Research Award (AGRA) is supporting Dr. Iwasaki's postdoctoral work on the super-enhancer landscape of PTCL, a group of cancers whose non-coding regulatory biology remains largely unexplored. The cross-border mentorship structure of the AGRA allowed Dr. Iwasaki to launch a dedicated epigenomics platform for PTCL in the PETAL lab in Boston while maintaining active collaboration with Kyoto University.
The collaboration between ASH and PETAL has enabled Dr. Iwasaki to extend this platform to the Consortium's global collection of patient samples, putting PETAL at the forefront of research needed to design more precise treatments for PTCL patients around the globe.
In 2023, the ASH Hematology Inclusion Pathway (HIP) Award supported Dr. Maria Fernandez Turizo's work as well as PETAL's global project evaluating outcomes in T-cell lymphomas. With this support, Dr. Fernandez Turizo published several important papers, including work on therapy sequencing, real-world evidence of duvelisib and romidepsin efficacy, a new risk score (the PIRT score) for patients with relapsed/refractory T-cell lymphoma, and a new clinical measure (relapse within 12 months) to help predict outcomes.
Through the award, Dr. Fernandez Turizo was able to attend the 2023 ASH Annual Meeting and present her work. She says the award also strengthened collaboration with international partners and increased access to the Consortium's research.
Your generosity to the ASH Foundation continues this momentum, supporting more awards like the AGRA and HIP, and helping more patients with blood disorders benefit from innovative, data-driven, and compassionate care. When you donate to the ASH Foundation, 100% of every gift goes directly to ASH programs like these -- helping drive scientific breakthroughs and conquer blood diseases worldwide.
What is the PETAL Consortium?
In 2023, Salvia Jain, MD, a hematologist-oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, recognized the lack of systematic, longitudinal data for patients with PTCL. In response, she founded PETAL Consortium — a first-of-its-kind global network dedicated to advancing care for PTCL by serving as a central hub of information.
PTCL’s rarity has significantly impeded research efforts and clinical trial development. PETAL overcomes this challenge by uniting leading centers of excellence in PTCL clinical care and research worldwide, enabling investigators to generate, collate, and access data from hundreds of patients.
Today, PETAL brings together more than 100 investigators from over 20 international research sites to accelerate discovery and transform how PTCL is understood and treated.
Letter from Dr. Salvia Jain
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Thank you for your continued support of the PETAL Consortium. Historically, the rarity and biological diversity of peripheral T-cell lymphoma (PTCL) have posed significant challenges to research progress and the development of effective clinical trials. I founded PETAL to help overcome these barriers by fostering collaboration across international institutions, enabling the sharing of patient data, and accelerating both scientific discovery and therapeutic advancement.
At PETAL, we leverage cutting-edge artificial intelligence and next-generation sequencing technologies to identify novel targets for drug development, working closely with our biotechnology and pharmaceutical partners.
I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to ASH for their support through the AGRA and HIP awards, which have been instrumental in advancing our work and expanding its impact in this rare and challenging disease.
Sincerely,
Dr. Salvia Jain
Founder of Lead Investigator of PETAL Consortium
Hematologist-Oncologist, Massachusetts General Hospital
