The Myeloma Beacon’s Medical Advisor program is expanding.

The current group of five Beacon Medical Advisors is being joined by five ad­di­tion­al Advisors from leading cancer centers across the United States.

Beacon Medical Advisors are myeloma specialists who assist The Beacon in re­view­ing and re­porting on myeloma-related research.

The most visible role of the Advisors, however, is in helping to answer questions and provide expert perspective in the Beacon’s online discussion forum ^[1].

Beacon Medical Advisors regularly review postings in the discussion forum, provide answers to questions that have been asked, and share their expertise with the Beacon’s global community of myeloma patients, caregivers, and health care professionals.

The continuing rapid growth of the Beacon community is one of the key drivers of the expansion of the Medical Advisor team. That community’s growth has been mirrored by increasing activity in the Beacon discussion forum.  It is now common in the forum for there to be more than 30 or 40 new postings in a single day.

The five new Beacon Medical Advisors are:

• Dr. Prashant Kapoor of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota
• Dr. Jonathan Kaufman of Emory University’s Winship Cancer Institute in Atlanta
• Dr. Heather Landau of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York
• Dr. Jacob Laubach of the Dana-Farber Cancer Center in Boston
• Dr. Jatin Shah of the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

The new Advisors join the existing team of five Advisors, which includes

• Dr. Adam Cohen of the University of Pennsylvania’s Abramson Cancer Center in Philadelphia
• Dr. Edward Libby of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle
• Dr. Kenneth Shain of the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa
• Dr. Jason Valent of the Cleveland Clinic
• Dr. Peter Voorhees of the University of North Carolina’s Lineberger Cancer Center in Chapel Hill.

Medical Advisors are selected by the Myeloma Beacon Staff based on the depth of their myeloma-related experience, their involvement in myeloma-related research, and their commitment to the Beacon’s goal of providing balanced and objective perspectives on myeloma-related issues.

The Beacon Medical Advisor program was started three years ago. Since then, the myeloma specialists participating in the program have made more than 1000 postings in the Beacon’s discussion forum. These postings have provided valuable advice to Beacon readers from around the world.

The Beacon’s discussion forum is a key part of the Myeloma Beacon’s service to the global myeloma com­munity. It currently contains almost 3,000 discussion threads with a total of over 18,000 postings by myeloma patients and caregivers.

Taken as a whole, the forum is a significant repository of myeloma-related information and support. There are numerous discussions, for example, about myeloma treatments such as Velcade ^[2] and Revlimid ^[3]; stem cell transplantation ^[4]; maintenance therapy ^[5]; side effects such as peripheral neuropathy ^[6], muscle cramps and soreness ^[7], and itching ^[8], and common myeloma-related procedures such as bone marrow biopsies ^[9].  (All links in the previous sentence lead to lists of forum discussions related to the listed topics.)

No registration is required to view the content of the forum or to post to the forum -- discussions in the forum can be viewed and searched by anyone, and guest posting (that is, posting without registration) is permitted.

Registered forum members are able to exchange private messages with one another and also can choose to receive daily or weekly email summaries (“digests”) of all forum postings. Registration is free, and the information provided during registration is used only for forum-related purposes; no registration information is shared with third parties.