Raphael E. Pollock, MD, PhD, will join Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center-Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute as Chief of Medical Services, Professor, and Director of the Division of Surgical Oncology in the university's Wexner Medical Center College of Medicine, beginning September 1, moving from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
"Raph brings to our cancer center a broad vision-the perspective of a skilled cancer surgeon as well as that of a scientist with 30 years in a National Institutes of Health-funded lab," Michael Caligiuri, MD, Director of the OSCCC and CEO of James, said in a news release.
Pollock's research and practice focuses on soft tissue sarcoma. He is the principal investigator of an $11.5-million National Cancer Institute SPORE grant to support collaborative sarcoma translational research. Pollock has been at MD Anderson for 31 years, most recently as Head of the Division of Surgery.
Mahul B. Amin, MD, Chairman and Professor of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, has been named Editor-in-Chief of the eighth edition of the American Joint Committee on Cancer's Cancer Staging Manual. He specializes in tumors of the genitourinary tract including prostate, urinary bladder, kidney, and testis, with a focus in the discovery and validation of biomarkers in urologic malignancies for clinical personalized medicine. He was a member of the AJCC's Executive Committee from 2003 to 2011 and is a coauthor of the current World Health Organization's classification systems for urothelial tumors and renal neoplasms.
"He brings a multidisciplinary approach to the editor-in-chief position, in addition to a molecular-based medical perspective of cancer staging," David P. Winchester, MD, FACS, Medical Director of the American College of Surgeons Cancer Programs, said in a news release. "These approaches are important since, for this latest edition, we're stabilizing anatomic staging and expanding the focus on personalized medicine using molecular markers."
The Manual, published by the same publisher as OT, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, part of Wolters Kluwer Health, is expected to be available in late 2015, and the development process will involve some 500 cancer experts worldwide.
And, David P. Winchester, MD, FACS, also received his own recent honor: the first Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Surgical Oncology, which was given during the organization's Annual Cancer Symposium in March, in recognition of outstanding contributions to cancer surgery, through service, research, or enhancements to clinical care or improving the lives of cancer patients.
"The SSO award is an honor for me personally, but it also is a tribute to the work of the College staff and countless professional volunteers," he said.
The following members of the oncology community have been selected as new Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators:
* Michael A. Dyer, PhD, Director of the Division of Developmental Biology and Co-Leader of the Developmental Biology and Solid Tumor Program at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital;
* Neil Hunter, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Human Anatomy at the University of California Davis School of Medicine;
* Christopher D. Lima, PhD, Member of the Lima Lab at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; and
* Harmit S. Malik, PhD, Principal Investigator of the Malik Lab at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
* Sharon H. Giordano, MD, has been named Professor and Chair of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center's new Department of Health Services Research, which will examine the delivery, quality, and costs of health care.
"We have a growing need to develop strategies regarding cancer care delivery as well as to demonstrate value in health care, specifically in prevention, treatment and survivorship," she said in a news release.
Giordano, who will continue treating patients in the Department of Breast Medical Oncology, has previously served on a committee of the American Society of Clinical Oncology Institute for Quality, and has also helped develop breast cancer treatment guidelines on an expert panel of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.
Carlos L. Arteaga, MD, Professor of Medicine and Cancer Biology at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, has been appointed Founding Director of the Center for Cancer Targeted Therapies (CCTT) there and Director of the Cancer Center's Research Network (VICCRN). He is currently Associate Director for Clinical Research, Director of the Breast Cancer Program and Leader of the Breast Cancer Specialized Program of Research Excellence. He also holds the Donna S. Hall Chair in Breast Cancer, and was recently named President-elect of the American Association for Cancer Research for 2013-2014.
The CCTT extends the Cancer Center's Personalized Cancer Medicine Initiative, an effort to help translational and clinical investigators focus on genomic signatures in a patient's tumor and use that information to match the patient to a targeted therapy. The new Center is a collaboration between the institution's Phase 1 Program, the University's Institute of Imaging Sciences, and the Division of Interventional Oncology in the Department of Radiology.
"This is very exciting to me because it represents an opportunity to incorporate the mechanistic sciences with imaging and with drug development, using predictive molecular biomarkers," Arteaga said. "All of these are local strengths at Vanderbilt. Thus, I think it's time that we make a concerted effort to integrate these strengths into something that can accelerate the clinical development of drugs and combination therapies."
The new VICCRN will create a regional cancer research consortium by providing clinical research opportunities between VICC investigators and affiliate partners in Tennessee and surrounding states. As director, Arteaga will work closely with leaders of the health care systems that provide care to thousands of cancer patients in the region.
Peter D. Beitsch, MD, FACS, has been elected President of the American Society of Breast Surgeons. He is a fellow of the Society of Surgical Oncology and served as the first chairman of the Community Surgical Oncologist Committee; he sat on the Executive Council from 2007 to 2010; and he currently serves on the Board of the James Ewing Foundation. He is in private practice at Medical City Dallas Hospital.
Robert G. Maki, MD, PhD, Medical Director of the Sarcoma Cancer Program at the Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai Medical Center and the Steven Ravitch Chair in Pediatric Hematology-Oncology, has been presented with the Nobility in Science Award at the Sarcoma Foundation of America Annual Gala.
The award recognizes an outstanding scientist who is dedicated to the advancement of scientific knowledge of sarcoma, working to find innovative treatments. Maki has expanded Mount Sinai's basic and translational sarcoma cancer research programs, and his research is focused on developing and delivering personalized treatments and novel therapeutics to sarcoma patients to understand the biology of the tumors. He is also expanding the breadth of the pediatric clinical program in Hematology/Oncology at Mount Sinai.
Hua Eleanor Yu, PhD, Co-Leader of the Cancer Immunotherapeutics Program at City of Hope, along with colleagues, received a $2.5-million grant from the Marcus Foundation to test a novel therapy to treat brain tumors and lymphoma in human clinical trials. The therapy works through a two-part process that simultaneously takes apart the tumor's support network while stimulating the immune system to attack cancerous cells.
Co-investigators for this trial, the first of its kind in humans, include Stephen J. Forman, MD, the Francis & Kathleen McNamara Distinguished Chair in Hematology and Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation and Director of the T Cell Immunotherapy Research Laboratory; Behnam Badie, MD, Director of the Brain Tumor Program; and Marcin Kortylewski, PhD, Assistant Professor of the Department of Cancer Immunotherapeutics and Tumor Immunology.
Rudolph M. Navari, MD, PhD, FACP, Associate Dean and Director of Indiana University School of Medicine-South Bend, has received a $2.1-million grant from the National Cancer Institute to determine the efficacy of the anti-psychotic olanzapine to assuage both nausea and vomiting among patients being treated with highly emetogenic chemotherapy. The grant will support a multi-institution, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial. The research builds on Navari's previous work with olanzapine. Navari is the principal investigator of the four-year study, in partnership with Charles Loprinzi, MD, of the Mayo Clinic and Steven Grunberg, MD, of the University of Vermont.
Roswell Park Cancer Institute has announced that the following individuals have received research grants totaling some $3.3 million:
* Yuesheng Zhang, MD, PhD, Professor of Oncology in the Department of Chemoprevention, has received a five-year $1.7-million grant from the NIH to study the molecular basis for why men have a risk for bladder cancer four times higher than women's risk, and to investigate potential intervention strategies;
* John Blessing, MD, PhD, Executive Director of the Gynecology Oncology Group (GOG) Statistical and Data Center, has received a one-year subcontract award of $300,552 from the GOG and the NCI for a long-term follow-up study of patients at high genetic risk for breast and ovarian cancers;
* Kenneth Gross, PhD, Chairman of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Dominic Smiraglia, PhD, Associate Professor of Oncology in the Department of Cancer Genetics, and Norma Nowak, PhD, Associate Professor of Oncology in the Department of Cancer Genetics, have received a two-year, $290,839 grant from the NCI to identify genetic mutations and other abnormalities, and Smiraglia also received additional funding from the American Institute for Cancer Research to study potential dietary interventions to affect progression of recurrent prostate cancer;
* Santosh Patnaik, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Thoracic Surgery, has received a two-year, $241,931 grant from the NCI to develop microRNA methods to predict prognosis in early-stage lung cancer (in collaboration with Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center);
* Michael Higgins, PhD, Associate Professor of Oncology in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, has received a two-year subcontract of $209,235 from the United States Department of Defense and the University of Nebraska Medical Center to study the role of the BORIS gene in the formation of cancer in the ovary;
* Vijay Jayaprakash, MBBS, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Dentistry & Maxillofacial Prosthetics, has received a two-year, $206,066 grant from Merck Sharp & Dohme Corp. to study whether persistent HPV infection is related to the progression to invasive cancer;
* Robert Plunkett, MD, Associate Professor of Neurosurgery, has received a two-year subcontract of $146,716 from Buffalo BioLabs LLC and the NCI to study a novel anticancer agent to treat glioblastoma multiforme;
* Katerina Gurova, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Cell Stress Biology, has received a one-year, $125,000, NCI grant to test the novel anticancer compound, curaxin, against pancreatic cancer;
* Elizabeth Repasky, PhD, Professor in the Department of Immunology, received a six-month grant from Cleveland BioLabs Inc. to evaluate the effect of new anticancer agents used with erlotinib against non-small-cell lung cancer; and
* Nathalie Zeitouni, MD, Chief of Dermatologic Surgery, has received a one-year grant from the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery to study the effectiveness of non-invasive imaging to measure skin tumors.
Deborah Knapp, DVM, MS, the Dolores L. McCall Professor of Comparative Oncology at Purdue University, has received a $50,000 grant from the Animal Cancer Foundation for a two-year study on bladder cancer therapy designed to develop a new drug therapy for both dogs and people with invasive transitional cell carcinoma (InvTCC).
The study will focus on a new drug strategy that is expected to transform InvTCC treatment by safely delivering the drug tubulysin B (which has extremely potent anti-tumor effects) selectively to the cancer cells by conjugating the drug to folate. Previous research has shown that specific cancers take up much higher amounts of folate than normal cells, allowing preferential delivery of folate-drug conjugates to the cancer.
The Conquer Cancer Foundation recognized some 100 cancer investigators who presented research at the ASCO Annual Meeting with Merit Awards. The following recipients of the highest-ranking scores determined by ASCO's Scientific Program Committee received Special Merit Awards:
* Hiroko Masuda, MD, PhD, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, received the Bradley Stuart Beller Special Merit Award for the overall highest-ranking abstract;
* Daniel Morgenstern, MB BChir, PhD, MRCPCH, of The Hospital for Sick Children, received the Brigid Leventhal Merit Award for the highest-ranking abstract in pediatrics;
* Michael R. Folkert, MD, PhD, of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, received the Pain and Symptom Management Merit Award for the highest-ranking abstract in pain and symptom management research; and
* Chelsea L. Collins, MD, Medical College of Wisconsin, received the James B. Nachman ASCO Junior Faculty Award in Pediatric Oncology for the highest-ranking abstract in pediatric oncology submitted by a junior faculty member.
The John van Geest Cancer Research Centre at Nottingham Trent University has received an [pounds]8-million donation from the John and Lucille van Geest Foundation, bringing to approximately [pounds]16m the total amount that the foundation has donated. The money will fund the institution's research, which is based at the Clifton Campus in the University's School of Science and Technology.
ONS Awards and New Leaders
Announced at the Oncology Nursing Society's Annual Congress, held this year in Washington, D.C., were the following members of the Board of Directors for 2013-2014:
* President: Mary Gullatte, PhD, RN, ANP, BC, AOCN, FAAN, Vice President of Patient Services and Chief Nursing Officer at Emory University Hospital Midtown and adjunct clinical faculty at the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University;
* President-Elect: Margaret Barton-Burke, PhD, RN, FAAN, Mary Ann Lee Professor of Oncology Nursing at the University of Missouri and research scientist at Siteman Cancer Institute;
* Treasurer: Tracy K. Gosselin, RN, PhD, AOCN, Associate Chief Nursing Officer and Assistant Vice President at Duke Cancer Institute at Duke University Health System;
* Secretary: Marlon Garzo Saria, MSN, RN, AOCNS, Advanced Practice Nurse Researcher at the University of California, San Diego;
* Directors-at-Large (newly elected): Anne M. Ireland, MSN, RN, AOCN, CENP, Director of Clinical Practice and Innovation at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington, Vt., and Susie Newton, RN, MS, AOCN, AOCNS, Senior Director at Health Management Solutions at Quintiles in Dayton, Ohio;
* Directors-at-Large (returning): Barbara Biedrzycki, PhD, RN, CRNP, AOCNP, Nurse Practitioner at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, Vicki Norton, RN, OCN, Clinical Nursing Director at Park Nicollet Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park, Minn., Deborah Kirk Walker, DNP, FNP-BC, AOCN, Assistant Professor /Nurse Practitioner at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and Lori Williams, PhD, APRN-CNS, OCN, AOCN, Assistant Professor in the Department of Symptom Research at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
In addition, the following awards were presented at the meeting:
ONS Distinguished Awards
* Ruth McCorkle, PhD, RN, FAAN, the Florence Wald Professor of Nursing at Yale University School of Nursing, received the Lifetime Achievement Award for outstanding contributions to the field of oncology nursing and leadership within ONS;
* Laurel Northouse, PhD, RN, FAAN, the Mary Lou Willard French Professor of Nursing at the University of Michigan School of Nursing, received the Distinguished Researcher Award to recognize research that has enhanced the science and practice of oncology nursing; and
* Deborah Boyle, RN, MSN, AOCNS, FAAN, Oncology Clinical Nurse Specialist at the University of California Irvine Medical Center/Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, received the Rose May Carroll-Johnson ONS Distinguished Award for Consistent Contributions to Nursing Literature for consistent and significant contributions to the oncology nursing literature.
Certification and Employer Recognition Awards (presented by the Oncology Nursing Certification Corporation)
* Georgia Cusack, MS, RN, AOCNS, nurse educator in the Office of the Clinical Director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health, was named the 2013 Advanced Oncology Certified Nurse of the Year based on her contributions to oncology nursing and oncology nursing service, and for supporting and promoting certification in oncology nursing;
* Marsha Richardson, RN, MSN, OCN, CBCN, the Oncology Program Coordinator and a breast cancer navigator at Parrish Medical Center in Titusville, Fla., was named the 2013 Certified Breast Care Nurse of the Year for her contributions to breast care nursing and nursing service, and for promoting certification in breast care/oncology nursing;
* Janine Kokal, MS, RN, OCN, educator with the Mayo Clinic Cancer Education Program, was named the 2013 Oncology Certified Nurse of the Year for her contributions to oncology nursing and service, and for supporting and promoting certification in oncology nursing; and
* Saint Peter's Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J., received the 2013 Employer Recognition Award for its sustained support of oncology nursing certification.
Also at this year's Congress, CURE magazine recognized Angela Krach, RN, an oncology nurse at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, with its 2013 Extraordinary Healer Award for Oncology Nursing. She was selected to receive the award based on a nominating essay, written by a patient who had experienced an oncology nurse demonstrating exceptional compassion, expertise, and commitment to their patients.
Nursing Excellence Awards
CentraState Health System recently honored seven nurses for their exceptional clinical skill and leadership in both the hospital and community. CentraState Medical holds Magnet recognition status from the American Nurses Credential Center. This year's winners of the Nursing Excellence Awards (shown left to right):
* Karen Goglia, RN, AD, received the Critical Care/Emergency Services Award;
* Elieen Ammon, RN, CNOR, and Helen Bueti, RN, CGRN, both received the Perioperative Services Award;
* Renie Ebreo, RN-BC, MSN, received the Mental Health Services Award;
* Mary Foster, RNC, received the Maternal/Child Health Services Award;
* Vickie Moon, RN-BC, received the Medical Surgical Services Award; and
* Judy Howley, RN, CDP (not shown), received the Long-Term Care Services Award.
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