Since its founding in 1974, the research mission of Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University has always been centered around its patients. Today, Lurie is nationally recognized among cancer research institutions — its doctors help write guidelines for cancer treatment.
According to its website, more than 18,000 people are diagnosed with cancer at Lurie each year. To treat these patients, the cancer center combines scientific research and medical expertise in hopes of improving clinical care.
“The longer it takes to find the cure, we lose more people,” Director Dr. Leonidas C. Platanias said. “That’s where supporting cancer research is such an important thing because you really save lives during the process and afterward.”
Platanias’ research focuses on understanding signaling pathways within myeloid leukemia cells, which has led to several clinical trials for possible therapies.
His focus as both the director and principal investigator of the Leonidas Platanias Lab is making sure that research produced from the lab can translate to clinical care, he said.
“One of the major goals we have is to accelerate this process,” Platanias said. “When you do an experiment, it could take years — even if it is completely successful — to see it go to a clinical trial, to go to a patient. It takes forever. … We try to create incentives and find ways that would bring (scientists) closer with clinical investigators.”
Platanias’ goals have manifested into programs like Lurie’s Translational Bridge Program, in which laboratory scientists partner with clinicians to support the translation of scientific research into clinical fields.
Research does not just inform patient care; the process works in both directions, according to Dr. Mohamed Abazeed, a co-leader of Lurie’s Lung Cancer Program.
“As I see patients in the clinic, I can identify and do more directed science and say, ‘Look this is really a significant limitation in our ability to deliver excellent clinical care. Why don’t we take this back to the laboratory and then improve it or address it?’” Abazeed said.
Abazeed was named the chair of the radiation oncology department at the Feinberg School of Medicine last April. His research focuses on designing large-scale, data-driven approaches to find vulnerabilities that therapies could target to personalize treatment in patients with thoracic cancers.
In radiation therapy, Abazeed said, patients are typically administered a radiation dose based on their stage or type of cancer. His research, however, steers away from this “one-size-fits-all” approach by utilizing artificial intelligence and computational models to identify various factors that refine dose recommendations.
For the past year and a half, one of Abazeed’s devices has been undergoing clinical trials. The device takes CT scans to identify features that are more resistant or sensitive to radiation. It then matches a dose to minimize the recurrence of tumors in patients.
“A key part of our research program is to learn from our patients, but also then to deliver the products to those patients,” Abazeed said. “Nothing is more satisfying than having one of your patients on something that you contributed to developing and then seeing better outcomes. That’s why folks like me become physician scientists: to actually translate discoveries into the clinic.”
This relationship between scientific research and its clinical implications can be easily forgotten when conducting basic research, according to Ali Shilatifard, leader of the Cancer Epigenetics and Nuclear Dynamics Program at the center and chair of Feinberg’s biochemistry and molecular genetics department.
Shilatifard, who was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in April, researches how DNA transcription regulation is central to many forms of cancers. Several of his findings are being tested in clinical studies for the treatment of bladder and esophageal cancers, as well as pediatric brain tumors.
To emphasize the importance of basic research, Shilatifard said he created the $250,000 Kimberly Prize in Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, which the department allocates to one researcher each year.
“This is the largest prize given by a university to biochemistry and molecular genetics … given to a basic scientist, biochemist and molecular biologist who has done major discoveries and that discovery has changed (the) clinic,” Shilatifard said.
He said he created the award to “emphasize” to colleagues and students that there can be no advancement in medicine without basic research.
The significance of scientific research is to translate findings into clinical trials to develop drug therapies and to improve the quality of patients’ lives, according to Shilatifard and Platanias.
“If you can save one life, one cancer patient, that’s huge,” Platanias said. “(We will) keep fighting every day to save more lives.”
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