Game-Changer Archives - Page 8 of 45

Kristen Whitaker, MD

Funded by Hooters of America, LLC

Clinical trials test new treatments for patients. Clinical trials also help doctors learn what type of treatments work best for what patients. It is important for patients to participate in clinical trials so that we can continue to develop new treatments and improve the care of cancer patients. Very few adult patients with cancer join clinical trials. Black patients participate in trials less than white patients. We have learned several of the reasons that black patients are less likely to join clinical trials. Using what we have previously learned we will create an educational brochure designed specifically for black patients with breast cancer to see if it helps address some of the unique concerns black women have about joining clinical trials.

Angelique Richardson, MD, PhD

Funded by Hooters of America, LLC

One in every eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in a lifetime. But it doesn’t impact everyone equally. While Caucasian women are more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer, African- American (AA) women are more likely to die from the disease. In addition, AA women are more likely to be diagnosed at a younger age and have a more aggressive form of breast cancer. There have been many improvements in the treatment of breast cancer leading to a lower chance of dying from the disease. But AA women have not been shown to benefit as much as Caucasian women from these advancements. There are many factors believed to be the reason for this racial difference in survival. But there is a need for more research into this area. One way to better study these factors is within the context of a clinical trial. AA women are historically less likely to be in a cancer clinical trial study. This proposed study is aimed at increasing the enrollment of AA female breast cancer patients in clinical trials at UCSD by creating a clinical trial education program to both educate and engage the community. This is predicted to lead to a decrease in the current breast cancer survival disparity.

Hatem Soliman, MD

Funded by Hooters of America, LLC

This goal of this project is to develop a new mobile application that will bring together multiple useful functions that will help breast cancer patients who are considering or participating in clinical trials. There are various applications in the market that may do one specific function but very few integrate both patient education resources with tools to help patients manage their participation on clinical trials. This includes keeping track of medication compliance, appointments, and side effects. All of these patient reported outcomes are critical for the successful completion of a clinical trial. A tool that can provide both information to breast cancer patients while helping them be compliant with the clinical trial needs could be a valuable tool as more patients depend on their smartphones and mobile devices on a daily basis. 

G. Elizabeth Pluhar, DVM, PhD & Michael Graner, PhD

Funded by the 2019 Wine Celebration Fund a Need for Canine Comparative Oncology

Glioblastoma (GB), one of the most common tumors of the brain, has no known cure and human patients diagnosed with this awful disease survive an average of 14 months despite aggressive therapy. Our immune system is made to naturally attack foreign materials that invade our bodies, such as viruses, bacteria, or abnormal (tumor) cells. However, many tumor cells, including GB, have the developed the means that allows them to hide from the normal immune response so they can grow and spread inside our bodies. We discovered methods to expose these tumor cells to the normal immune response that then allows killing of tumor cells. We developed a small compound (peptide) that binds to tumor cells and makes them vulnerable to immune cells that can then kill them. In this project, we will devise a method to deposit that peptide into the normal brain tissue around the site of tumor removal that usually contains invasive tumor cells. Then other injections will be given that will stimulate immune cells to attack any remaining tumor cells. This new treatment will be used in pet dogs that naturally develop GB-like brain tumors but are rarely offered effective treatment. If this treatment is successful in dogs, similar treatment will be used in human GB patients.

John Perry, PhD

Funded in partnership with the Kansas City Chiefs Football Club

Modern cancer treatments cause serious side effects and often fail. Cancers often contain rare stem cells that resist treatments and cause the cancer to come back. At that point, cancer becomes even more difficult to treat. In children, leukemia is the most common type of cancer, and treatment failure occurs in about one in four patients. This situation has remained essentially unchanged for decades, which indicates an urgent need to develop new treatments focused on eliminating cancer stem cells.

Two genetic pathways, which are among the most commonly activated in human cancer, interact to drive cancer stem cell development and resistance to therapy. Surprisingly, we found that a certain common chemotherapy drug can inhibit the cancer stem cell driving interaction of these pathways at low doses. Unlike current practice of using this drug to kill rapidly dividing cells, we changed its use to specifically target treatment resistant cancer stem cells in an animal model.

Cancer is normally held at bay by the immune system. Only when the immune system is undermined can cancer take hold. Our results indicate that the immune system can once again be activated against cancer stem cells. How it does so and how we might improve these responses in patients is mostly mysterious. Now, we will use single cell DNA sequencing to obtain a large scale view of immune effects of our new treatment. This will eventually inform the design better treatments.

Heinz-Josef Lenz, MD, FACP

Funded by Gastric Cancer Foundation

Gastric cancer is the fifth most frequently diagnosed malignancy in men and women, with nearly 800,000 deaths per year, making it the third leading cause of cancer related death worldwide. Therefore, it is critical to find more effective therapeutic approaches for this disease. Our group has investigated the molecular make up of gastric cancer using large patient cohorts to better understand the differences of molecular markers in gastric cancer and to identify new targets for drug development. Our research was able to find one of the main regulator of tumor growth and spread. This genetic alteration is called lysine methyltransferase 2 (KMT2) which is frequently altered in gastric cancer and a key driver of tumor growth. When normal tissues loses this gene, this tissue can became cancerous by promoting the development of tumor cells. Our group (Wang J, et al., JCO, 2020) was one of the first working on this particular gene and has recently conducted a comprehensive analysis of 1,245 patients with advanced gastric cancer, whose tumors were analyzed using with comprehensive and cutting edge molecular testing technologies. We found that patients with the KMT2 mutation have very unique tumor characteristics such as changes in the DNA repair pathways which makes them very vulnerable to specific chemotherapeutic drugs but also novel targeted therapies. Our project focuses on studying what the best treatment therapies for this uniquely subgroup of gastric cancer patient will be and explore existing and novel agents to improve outcome in patients with gastric cancer. The goal is that our project will lead to more effective and less toxic treatment options for patients with gastric cancer.

Jessica Lawrence, DVM & Daniel Vallera, PhD

Funded by the 2019 Wine Celebration Fund a Need for Canine Comparative Oncology

Sarcomas are malignant cancers that form in bone and soft tissues (muscle, cartilage, nerves) in many species. Sarcomas are rare and often affect children and teenagers. Outcomes have not changed much in the last 10 years. New treatments are needed to better cure these tumors. Because sarcomas are not common in people, it can be hard to test new treatments. Pet dogs commonly develop sarcomas, and their tumors behave like human tumors. Pet dogs with sarcoma give us a chance to test new treatments that can help both dogs and people. Radiation therapy is commonly used to kill sarcoma cells in dogs and humans but it cannot cure tumors by itself. Radiation therapy can also cause an anti-cancer immune response, where the body’s own immune cells kill tumor cells for a short time. In this study, we are exploring a new way to use the immune system to work with radiation therapy to destroy sarcoma cells. We have invented a designer drug specifically for dogs that “kick-starts” the anti-cancer immune response. We expect that this drug will help us improve outcomes for patients with sarcomas when radiation therapy is used. We will test this expectation in the laboratory and in pet dogs with sarcomas that need treatment. This project will help us learn to use a drug like this in people with sarcomas that need radiation therapy.

Pavani Chalasani, MD

Funded by Hooters of America, LLC

The goal of “Campaign to Improve Access to Clinical Trials” at the University of Arizona Cancer Center (UACC) is to increase the clinical trial access to a diverse population in Arizona. Dr. Chalasani, Breast Cancer Disease Oriented Team Leader, will oversee the campaign to improves access by involving the breast multidisciplinary team, patient navigators and physician liaisons to develop educational materials and outreach programs. Patients and community physicians will be targeted through proposed outreach programs by developing targeted educational materials. Materials and training will be provided to introduce and educate about clinical trials to patients early by various members of their cancer team. The goal of this campaign is to become a model for other disease teams and cancer centers to implement to improve clinical trial enrollment.

Adam Bass, MD

Funded by Gastric Cancer Foundation

This application focuses upon the need to develop new therapies for stomach cancer, which is the 3rd leading cause of cancer mortality in the world.  In our laboratory’s prior studies, we described the patterns of disruptions in the genome (or DNA of the cell) that develop in the stomach cells which become cancerous.  The overall hope for this work is that finding the genetic causes of cancer can be a source of development of new targets for guiding cancer therapy.  The primary way to try to use genomic understanding of cancer to guide therapy has been to find specific genes which are aberrantly activated in cancer.  However, to date, approaches to use this approach to guide therapy for stomach cancer has been largely disappointing despite individual successes.  Therefore, this new research program supported by the V Foundation and the Gastric Cancer Foundation aims to develop alternative approaches to use our understanding of the gastric cancer genome to guide development of new therapies.  Instead of focusing on the genomic alterations that impact individual genes, we are now pivoting to more broadly evaluating the patterns of genomic alterations and the classes of instability or genomic disruptions that occur in cells.  We have developed new approaches to classify the types of genomic disruptions that are characteristic of gastric cancer and then directly connecting these patterns to possible new therapeutic targets.  We believe that this work may serve as a critical foundation for novel development of therapies for these deadly cancers.

Aniko Vigh, M.D.

Funded by 2020 Kay Yow Cancer Fund Final Four Research Award

Since the mid-1960s, New Orleans has had a majority African American (AA) population, many of whom are poor and uninsured. This, along with a lack of communication, misunderstanding of clinical research and limited funding for education and outreach, has led to a lack of access to clinical cancer research trials among this demographic.

The goal of this program is to assist in the enrollment of cancer patients and those at risk for cancer into clinical research trials, with particular emphasis on outreach, recruitment and enrollment of minority patients.

Pivotal to this effort is a patient navigator with extensive training in cultural competence who will be assigned specifically to clinical research.  In addition to assisting enrollment in trials at our clinical sites, the Navigator will also use Tulane’s established relationships with community organizations, community leaders, area physicians and affiliate sites to help educate minorities about clinical research.

The Navigator will identify and approach prospective study patients; build a relationship with them, their caregivers and family members; and guide them through the enrollment process while serving as an essential link between the patient and the study team. 