Bölümler
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In this episode, 2024 David Karnofsky Memorial Award winner Lillian L. Siu reviews her career developing novel therapies in the phase I setting, the evolution of her field, and her mentor’s dreaded “evil red pencil.”
Siu was among the first scientists to read out the signals of safety, pharmacology, and preliminary efficacy of therapeutic agents that ushered in a new era of cancer therapy. She has been involved in the early development of over 50 drugs and has focused on ways to improve efficiency and scientific relevance of clinical trials.
Over the course of her career as a phase I clinical trialist, Siu watched as the field moved away from using “maximum tolerated dose,” the growing need for early-phase efficacy data, and the emergence of intermediate biomarkers.
After a nearly 30-year-long career, Siu’s advice for young oncologists is simple: Don’t give up.
“Learn from every mistake or every challenge and rise above it and be tenacious,” Siu said. “Be persistent, because there’s never an end that is a bad ending. It is always a good ending if you put enough effort in it. Maybe not entirely the way you want it, but at least if you put in the effort, something will return to you that is worth your effort. I truly believe in that, and certainly I see that in my career.
“I don’t only have positive results, I have very often negative results, but it’s fun. Learning from your mistakes is half of the fun, and cherish that kind of moment to learn from it.”
Siu spoke with Jacquelyn Cobb, reporter with The Cancer Letter. A transcript of the conversation appears on The Cancer History Project.
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Something felt wrong during one of Morhaf Al Achkar’s regular runs on the treadmill in late 2016. He started gasping for breath.
“It became really hard to run,” he said. “That sudden development of shortness of breath alarmed me.”
Being a family physician in Indiana at the time, he asked a resident at the clinic where he worked to listen to his lungs. “There’s no air moving on the left side of your chest—that doesn’t seem right,” Al Achkar recalled hearing from the resident.
A few weeks later, Al Achkar received devastating news: he had stage 4 ALK-positive lung cancer. He estimated that he would live for just another six to 10 months.
But today—nearly eight years after his devastating diagnosis—Al Achkar is still working, now primarily as a researcher and educator.
Al Achkar spoke with Deborah Doroshow, assistant professor of medicine, hematology, and medical oncology at the Tisch Cancer Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
A transcript of this conversation is available on the Cancer History Project.
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Eksik bölüm mü var?
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When Stephanie Graff was a breast oncology fellow in 2010, one of her patients brought a marked up copy of “Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book” to an appointment.
“One of my patients had brought it in and was using it almost as her cancer notebook, and had pages flagged and said, ’Well, what about this? What about this? It says here…,’” Graff, director of Breast Oncology at Lifespan Cancer Institute and medical advisor for the Dr. Susan Love Foundation for Breast Cancer Research, said to The Cancer Letter.
It was the first time that the book, written by Susan Love, a breast cancer surgeon, activist, and founder of the Dr. Susan Love Foundation for Breast Cancer Research, had shown up on Graff’s radar.
“Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book” was first published in 1990. Now, Graff is a contributing author of the seventh edition, the most recent version of the book published in 2023.
Graff spoke with Alexandria Carolan, associate editor of the Cancer History Project. A full transcript of this conversation, including how Graff came to know and work with Susan Love, appears on the Cancer History Project.
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Soon after he was diagnosed with a dedifferentiated liposarcoma, C. Norman Coleman reached out to The Cancer Letter and the Cancer History Project to initiate a series of interviews about his life and career.
The plan was to keep going for as long as possible. Alas, only one interview–about an hour’s worth–got done. Coleman spoke with Otis Brawley and Paul Goldberg, co-editors of the Cancer History Project.
Coleman died March 1 at 79.
At NCI, Coleman was the associate director of the Radiation Research Program, senior investigator in the Radiation Oncology Branch in the Center for Cancer Research, and leader of a research laboratory at NIH. He was also the founder of the International Cancer Expert Corps, a non-profit he created to provide mentorship to cancer professionals in low- and middle-income countries and in regions with indigenous populations in upper-income countries.
This interview is available as a transcript on the Cancer History Project.
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In this conversation, Vivian Pinn speaks with Robert Winn, guest editor of The Cancer Letter and the Cancer History Project during Black History Month, about the obstacles she faced as a medical student, how she incidentally helped integrate restaurants in Charlottesville in the 1960s, and her beginnings as a Research Fellow in Immunopathology at NIH.
Pinn was the only African American and the only woman in her class to graduate from the University of Virginia School of Medicine in 1967. In 1982, she was the first African American woman to chair an academic pathology department in the United States, at Howard University College of Medicine.
She went on to become the first full-time director of the Office of Research on Women’s Health at NIH in 1991.
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In this conversation, Roderick Pettigrew speaks with Robert Winn, guest editor of The Cancer Letter and the Cancer History Project during Black History Month, about Pettigrew’s contributions to research, how he became an early self-taught expert on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or the MRI, as well as when he became founding director of National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.
Pettigrew is chief executive officer of Engineering Health (EnHealth) and inaugural dean for Engineering Medicine (EnMed) at Texas A&M University in partnership with Houston Methodist Hospital, and the Endowed Robert A. Welch Chair in Medicine and founding director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. Winn is the director and Lipman Chair in Oncology at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center, and senior associate dean for cancer innovation and professor of pulmonary disease and critical care medicine at VCU School of Medicine.
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As part of a series as a guest editor of the Cancer History Project to commemorate the 1964 Surgeon General’s Report on Smoking and Health, Alan Blum speaks with Louis Sullivan, who was Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services from 1989 to 1993.
Alan Blum is professor and Gerald Leon Wallace M.D. Endowed Chair in Family Medicine at the University of Alabama, as well as the director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society.
Throughout his career, Sullivan made smoking prevention a high priority, condemning the tobacco industry for targeting African Americans and calling on sports organizations to reject tobacco sponsorship.
In 1975, Sullivan was named founding dean and director of the Medical Education Program at Morehouse College. In 1981, the four-year Morehouse School of Medicine was established with Sullivan as dean and president.
In this interview, Sullivan speaks about growing up in the segregated South, his early years in medicine while living in Boston, and the medical community’s response to tobacco in the aftermath of the 1964 surgeon general’s report.
Read more and access the transcript on the Cancer History Project: https://cancerhistoryproject.com/article/former-hhs-secretary-louis-sullivan-recalls-sinking-rjrs-uptown-a-menthol-brand-for-black-smokers/
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In 1964, the Office of the Surgeon General issued a report on smoking and health that ended a debate that had raged for decades—stating that cigarettes cause lung cancer and other diseases.
Sixty years later, Alan Blum, professor and Gerald Leon Wallace M.D. Endowed Chair in Family Medicine at the University of Alabama, as well as the director of the Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society, sits down with Donald S. Shopland, an original member of the staff of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General upon its formation in 1962.
Since 1962, Shopland has served as an editor of 17 reports of the surgeon general on smoking and health, as interim director of the Office on Smoking and Health for two years in the 1980s, and as an advisor on smoking and health at NCI. He retired in 2014.
You can read the transcript here.
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George Santos, founder of Johns Hopkins University Bone Marrow Transplantation Program, pioneered many of the innovations used in bone marrow transplantation that are relevant today—but he didn’t get nearly as much credit as others working in the field.
Richard J. Jones, professor of oncology and medicine, director of the Bone Marrow Transplantation Program, and co-director, Hematologic Malignancies Program, at The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, spoke with the Cancer History Project about George Santos's legacy.
“Much of what we’re currently doing in bone marrow transplant internationally was developed by George,” Jones said.
A transcript of this conversation is available here.
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In this episode, Judith L. Pearson, best-selling author and founder of A 2nd Act, speaks with Alexandria Carolan, associate editor with the Cancer History Project.
Delving deep into Mary Lasker’s role as the “catalytic agent” who worked behind the scenes through proxies to accomplish the goal of curing cancer, Pearson wrote “Crusade to Heal America: The Remarkable Life of Mary Lasker.”
“She just wanted to light the fire and then wanted everybody else to go to work to make it happen,” Pearson said to The Cancer Letter. “She would give them whatever resources were necessary, including some of her own money, to make sure that the right congressmen and senators held positions got reelected, or got elected, and then went into the appropriate committees.”
A transcript of this recording appears on the Cancer History Project.
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At age 18, during basic training in Fort Polk, Louisiana, Chris Lundy slipped and broke his wrist.
At the hospital, the doctors set his wrist and ran some blood tests. What Lundy thought would be a simple visit turned into a series of months-long hospital stays.
Lundy was diagnosed with paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria, and his doctors sent him to Seattle, where he would become a patient of Donnall Thomas. Thomas would share the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1990 discoveries concerning organ and cell transplantation in the treatment of human disease.
Today, Lundy is the longest living recipient of an allogeneic transplant for aplastic anemia at Fred Hutch Cancer Center. He received the bone marrow transplant that saved his life in 1971.
In this interview, Chris and his brother, Jerry Lundy, speak with Dr. Deborah Doroshow, an oncologist at the Tisch Cancer Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Doroshow, who is also a historian of medicine, is a member of the editorial board of the Cancer History Project.
Read more here: https://cancerhistoryproject.com/article/chris-lundy-had-one-week-to-live-52-years-later-he-is-the-longest-living-bmt-recipient-at-the-hutch/
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What does it take to run an NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center for 22 years? And what does it takes to recruit a successor?
In this episode, Shelton “Shelley” Earp talks about his plans to step down as director of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center effective in June 2024. He is joined by Norman "Ned" Sharpless, former director of UNC Lineberger as well as former NCI director and former acting FDA commissioner. Sharpless chairs the committee charged with finding Earp’s successor.
Earp has served as director between 1997 and 2018 and then again from 2018 on, both preceding and succeeding Sharpless in the UNC job.
This is a special edition of the Cancer History Project podcast focused a little more on the present—and the future.
Read more here: https://cancerletter.com/conversation-with-the-cancer-letter/20230908_1/
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John Laszlo, professor emeritus at Duke University Medical Center and former national vice president for research at the American Cancer Society, speaks with the Cancer History Project’s Alex Carolan and Paul Goldberg about his life, career, and his authoritative book, “The Cure of Childhood Leukemia: Into the Age of Miracles.”
When Laszlo, 92, joined the Acute Leukemia Service at NCI in 1956, the cure for childhood leukemia seemed beyond reach. He worked directly with Emil “Tom” Frei, and Emil J Freireich—early researchers and doctors of childhood leukemia at NCI.
Laszlo’s book is based on taped interviews of doctors and scientists whose work led to the cure of childhood leukemia. It is an essential primary source for anyone interested in oncology and its history, and is now available for free as a digital download on the Cancer History Project.
In 1937, Laszlo’s family fled Vienna as Jewish refugees. His mother, a psychiatrist who trained with Anna Freud, discovered she had breast cancer on the SS Île de France while the family journeyed to America. She died two years later.
His father, Daniel Laszlo, a physician who specialized in cardiovascular physiology, found a job in cancer research at Mount Sinai Hospital. He went on to study folate antagonists in mice—though folate antagonists hadn’t been characterized yet. The untested regimen was administered against his recommendation to none other than Babe Ruth.
A transcript of this recording is available on the Cancer History Project.
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Marcus Humphrey, who was diagnosed with two subtypes of lymphoma in 2021, and his wife Mary Humphrey speak with Dr. Deborah Doroshow, an oncologist at the Tisch Cancer Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Doroshow, who is also a historian of medicine, is a member of the editorial board of the Cancer History Project and is guest editor during National Cancer Survivor Month this June.
Humphrey sought treatment at Medical University of South Carolina Hollings Cancer Center for a swelling that had grown exponentially on the right side of his neck. Two regimens of chemotherapy failed. Marcus Humphrey’s oncologist later said it was the worst case of lymphoma he had ever seen.
Humphrey was almost out of options—and his heavy tumor burden made doctors wary of CAR T-cell therapy. They weighed the risks and went for it.
After receiving treatment with CAR T cell therapy, and managing the side effects of neurotoxicity, cytokine release syndrome, and mobility issues—Humphrey’s scans are clear. He’s vacationing in Italy now, and was overlooking the Adriatic sea with his wife Mary during this conversation, available on the Cancer History Project.
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In this episode, 2023 David Karnofsky Memorial Award winner Hagop Kantarjian discusses his long career developing novel therapies for several types of leukemia.
“This is why I consider that choosing leukemia was the best decision in my life,” Kantarjian said to The Cancer Letter. “Because within the span of one professional lifetime, we were able to change the full course of all the leukemias from mostly incurable to mostly curable.”
Reviewing his extensive career in leukemia research, Kantarjian discusses the high cost of drug prices, and his optimism that the U.S. will overcome healthcare disparities, and the many lessons he learned from his mentor, Emil J Freireich.
“It's very important to continue to challenge the standards, the accepted standards, and to try to create new knowledge and innovate outside the general herd mentality that exists at any point in time,” Kantarjian said.
Kantarjian spoke with Jacquelyn Cobb, reporter with The Cancer Letter. A transcript of the conversation appears on The Cancer History Project.
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In this episode, Frederick Appelbaum, executive vice president, professor in the Clinical Research Division, and Metcalfe Family/Frederick Appelbaum Endowed Chair in Cancer Research at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, speaks with Alexandria Carolan, associate editor with the Cancer History Project.
Delving deep into Thomas’s role in discovering bone marrow transplantation and its role in curing hematologic cancers, Appelbaum, who became Thomas’s mentee and collaborator, wrote “Living Medicine: Don Thomas, Marrow Transplantation, and the Cell Therapy Revolution.”
“If it hadn't been told, and if the story had been lost to history, I just thought that would be a tragedy,” Appelbaum said to The Cancer Letter. “We've gone from a setting where Don and just one or two other people were the only ones that thought marrow transplantation was even possible in the 1950s, to today, where there are 100,000 transplants performed worldwide every year and 40 million people have signed up and registered to be potential stem cell donors.”
A transcript of this recording appears on the Cancer History Project.
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This episode features an interview with Sandra Hillburn, who was diagnosed with glioblastoma in 2006, and Dr. Deborah Doroshow, an oncologist at the Tisch Cancer Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Doroshow, who is also a historian of medicine, is a member of the editorial board of the Cancer History Project.
When Hillburn was first diagnosed, she was given two to three months to live. Then, she sought treatment at Duke Cancer Institute, where she underwent surgery to remove the tumor. Afterward, she began receiving an experimental CMV vaccine treatment.
The treatment worked. Today, she continues to receive the vaccine once every six months.
A transcript of this recording appears on the Cancer History Project.
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This episode features a recording of a March 7 Women’s History Month panel on the topic of Betty Ford, Nancy Reagan, and how their cancer diagnoses impacted a nation.
The panel was introduced by Monica Bertagnolli, MD, director of the National Cancer Institute, and moderated by Stacy Wentworth, MD, assistant professor of radiation oncology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine and Medical director of cancer survivorship at Atrium Wake Forest Baptist Health Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Bertagnolli and Wentworth were joined by Mirelle Luecke, MA, PhD, Supervisory museum curator of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum, and Karen Tumulty, MBA, Deputy editorial page editor and columnist at The Washington Post.
A transcript of this recording appears on the Cancer History Project.
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In this conversation, Richard Silvera, assistant professor of infectious disease at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, speaks with Robert A. Winn, director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center and guest editor of the Cancer History Project during Black History Month.
Silvera is a recipient of a grant from the Robert A. Winn Diversity in Clinical Trials Award Program, which was established in 2020 by the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation.
In this episode Silvera discusses his work caring for patients with anal cancer in the Bronx, and how doctors can gain the trust of underserved populations."
None of this work happens in isolation, but I don’t want to just be one researcher on an island by myself. I want to be part of a community of researchers doing this work," Silvera said.
A transcript of this recording appears on The Cancer Letter.
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Vickers: “We’ve been seen as exclusive and selected. I want to broaden that aperture for the organization.”
In this conversation, Selwyn Vickers, president and CEO of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, speaks with Robert Winn, director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center and guest editor of the Cancer History Project during Black History Month.
Vickers overviews his early career, how to tackle health disparities, and his plants for expanding access to MSK.
A transcript of the episode is available here.
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