Colleen Reardon Chapleau has seen first-hand how clinical trials have advanced the treatment of cancer and saved patients’ lives. She went to work at the bone marrow transplant unit at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in 1985, when it was a new program and one of only a handful of hospitals in the country offering the procedure.

Now, thanks to cancer research, bone marrow transplantation is no longer a last resort treatment for people with leukemia and lymphoma – it’s become an effective, standard therapy for those and additional types of cancer as well.

“I have been on the journey with hundreds of patients over the past 19 years,” Colleen says. “It has been so rewarding to see how results from clinical trials have improved bone marrow transplant therapy and allowed more patients to survive.”

Colleen is proud to have been there from the beginning, initially to educate patients and coordinate searches for donors. Today she manages the program and is deeply involved in clinical trials.

Colleen has a professional and a personal passion to help people with cancer. She travels the state of Iowa to recruit people and enlists all her friends to become volunteer marrow donors. She shared her expertise with the founders of the National Marrow Donor Program when it was developed in 1987, and has been active with the program ever since.

When Colleen’s mother found a lump in her breast, she turned to Colleen for help, and for hope. Mother and daughter both cried at the news that she had stage I breast cancer. But while her mother feared for her life, Colleen knew the disease was curable.

“I helped my parents make informed decisions about my mom’s medical care. I provided the optimism and encouragement my mom and dad needed so they could see beyond the treatment,” says Colleen, whose mother is now a 16-year cancer survivor.

Colleen’s father also benefited from his daughter’s expertise and encouragement when he faced prostate cancer in 2003. “I helped my parents see into the future,” she says.

Colleen is a cancer survivor herself, having had three different surgeries to remove cancerous tissue from her skin. She combines her passion for cancer patients and for cycling by raising money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Cycling is “pure joy” to Colleen, who has cycled across the states of Iowa and Wisconsin and through the Rocky Mountains – in the rain. “I thrive on the challenge of it,” she says.

Colleen works with clinical trials every day. As a member of the Bristol-Myers Squibb Tour of Hope™ Team, she wants to empower people to know that participation in clinical trials gives them the highest quality of care and helps others. “Being in a clinical trial is a forward way of thinking,” she says. “It’s taking action.