Recently by MD Anderson Faculty

By Michael Rytting and Sara Farris

  

Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of Gleevec in combination with chemotherapy to treat newly diagnosed children with Philadelphia chromosome-positive acute lymphocytic leukemia (Ph+ ALL).

 

While this is good news, it comes more than 10 years after it was approved in adults and about 8 years after I treated my first pediatric patient with chemotherapy plus Gleevec followed by a stem cell transplant. This young patient came here from the Philippines with Ph+ ALL, and I was able to treat her 'off-label' since Gleevec had already been approved in adults and was well-tolerated. Today she is cured of cancer.

 

Historically, high-risk Ph+ ALL patients received chemotherapy and a stem cell transplant. However, in 2009, a study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology showed that the addition of Gleevec to chemotherapy increased the 3-year survival without relapse from 35% to 80.5%. In retrospect, perhaps my patient might not have needed the transplant (and its associated risks) to be cured of her cancer.

 

For the most part, this latest approval doesn't really change the therapy for children with this disease. In fact, we have already moved forward with enrolling patients on similar therapies in clinical trials that involve newer variations of Gleevec. The new drugs may be more effective or have fewer toxicities.

  

By Sharon Dent, Ph.D., David Johnson, Ph.D., and Sarah Adai

Chromatin, the intertwined histone proteins and DNA that are packaged into chromosomes, has long been recognized as a gatekeeper to the underlying DNA template.

While chromatin is typically on the receiving end of the cell's intricate signaling pathways - culminating in the regulation of gene expression - evidence is emerging to give chromatin a previously unrecognized role: as a dynamic participant that transmits received signals back to other proteins to effect changes in cellular responses.  

This week in the journal Cell, faculty from MD Anderson's Department of Molecular Carcinogenesis and Center for Cancer Epigenetics review a number of recent studies highlighting chromatin's role as both receiver and transmitter of signals in various cell functions.

Review authors Sharon Dent, Ph.D. and David Johnson, Ph.D., highlight this growing area of research, which is relevant both for understanding basic cell regulation and for determining how signaling goes awry in diseases such as cancer.

Histone modifications: key players in chromatin signaling

Posttranslational modification of histones is one way that the cell regulates the packing and unpacking of chromatin, which in turn helps to determine whether a gene is activated or repressed.

By David M. Gershenson, M.D.

The Holy Grail of oncology is personalized cancer therapy. While patients with either malignant ovarian germ cell tumors or ovarian sex cord-stromal tumors, constituting two of the three major categories of ovarian cancer, have historically been treated on separate clinical trials, women with all types of epithelial tumors have been treated identically on the same trials over the past several decades.

With the explosion of information related to the molecular biology of ovarian cancer coupled with technological advances, continuing to study these epithelial cancers as a single disease entity is no longer acceptable.

In 2005, the Gynecologic Oncology Group (GOG), a National Cancer Institute - sponsored cooperative group, established the Rare Tumor Committee. The formation of this committee provided the impetus to begin to develop separate trials for women with three rare epithelial ovarian subtypes--clear cell carcinoma, low-grade serous carcinoma, and mucinous carcinoma.

By Michael Fisch M.D.

I grew up playing games with my friends.  I wanted to play any kind of physical game (sports), or board games (Stratego, Monopoly, Battleship, Chess) as long as there was a winner and a loser in the end. 

As an adult, I like sports but I no longer have the patience to play board games or video games -- for whatever reason. 

The practice of using games for health care purposes is being referred to as "gamification."  I doubted that I would have much patience for gamification in my professional or personal life, but recently I've  learned about two kinds of "games" in health care that I find fascinating. 

First, my colleague, Lorenzo Cohen, Ph.D. sent me a link to a TED talk link that I found mesmerizing.

I found it mesmerizing because:

• The speaker, a survivor of a serious health problem, invented a game to get better ("Jane:  the concussion slayer").

By: Raymond DuBois, M.D., Ph.D.

We have known for the past two decades that aspirin and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) use reduces the risk of colorectal and other cancers. Today the Lancet published new reports indicating that low dose daily aspirin reduces the risk of distant metastasis of several cancers (Lancet Early Online Publication.)

The data came from 51 trials that included over 77,000 patients.

This protective effect appears to occur within 3-5 years of beginning aspirin use. It was previously thought that this protective effect would take up to 10 years to have an impact. These trials were originally designed to compare aspirin with no treatment for the prevention of heart disease.

In carefully looking at the data it became apparent that regular aspirin use reduced the risk of colorectal cancer as well as esophageal, gastric, biliary and breast cancer. People using 75-300 mg per day were found to have a significant reduction in the total number of cancer cases. Aspirin also reduced the risk of cancer death by 15% within 5 years and people using aspirin for longer duration had a 37% reduction in risk.

 

By Howard Gutstein, M.D.,

 

About 20 years ago, I started medical practice with no intention of pursuing research.

 

 As the most junior person, I was asked to take care of children with cancer pain. I quickly realized that this was because no one else wanted to do it. The agony that these children endured could be incredible.

 

Some patients were nearly impossible to treat. In a few cases, children effectively had  to be put under general anesthesia to relieve their suffering.

 

I decided to try and do something more to help these kids. I moved to the University of Michigan and while continuing to take care of children, became a postdoctoral fellow in the research lab of Huda Akil, Ph.D., a noted pain researcher. Many years with her taught me not only research methods, but how to rigorously, creatively, and fearlessly approach even the most daunting scientific problems.

 

From that time forward, I focused my energies on trying to find more effective ways to relieve pain and suffering.  Today, I'm a professor in MD Anderson's Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine with an appointment in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

 

For thousands of years, the most effective treatment for severe pain has been opioid narcotics such as morphine.

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The Sixth International Conference on SUMO, Ubiquitin, UBL Proteins:  Implications for Human Diseases was held at the Dan Duncan building at MD Anderson Cancer Center from Feb. 8 to 11, 2012.  This biennial meeting has been organized by Edward T.H. Yeh, M.D., Chair of the Department of Cardiology since 2002.

More than 275 scientists from 18 countries participated in this exciting event that is internationally recognized as the most distinguished SUMO meeting.  

SUMO (small Ubiquitin-like modifier) was discovered in Yeh's laboratory in 1996 and has become a major post-translational protein modification pathway that plays an important role in cancer, inflammation, heart and neuro-degenerative diseases.

"There used to be so little known about SUMO. Now, a protein is assumed to be SUMOylated until proved otherwise," Yeh said.

MD Anderson President Ronald DePinho, M.D., welcomed the participants with his vision on cancer research and the bold endeavor that MD Anderson is undertaking. 

Nobel Laureates Avram Hershko, M.D., Ph.D., and Aaron Ciechanover, M.D., Ph.D., both of the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, winners of the 2004 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their discoveries in ubiquitin, discussed their latest research. 

By Naoto Ueno, M.D., Ph.D., Department of Breast Medical Oncology

Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is one of the most aggressive subtypes of breast cancer.  The MD Anderson Morgan Welch Inflammatory Breast Cancer Program and Clinic had a major presence at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium with nearly 15 abstracts related to IBC. They included research on cytokine changes, mesenchymal stem cell interaction and several new targets.

So, what are the three most important issues in the field of IBC?

1. We need to differentiate the disease from non-IBC cancers at the molecular level, so oncologists can establish universal criteria for the diagnosis of IBC.
2. We need to find unique causes of IBC that can be developed as IBC-specific targets. 
3. We need to uncover the risk factors associated with the development of IBC.
   

To address these issues it takes team medicine (multidisciplinary care) and team science. This applies internally at MD Anderson, but it's also critical to have a collaborative project at the international level. 

By Naoto Ueno, M.D., Ph.D., Department of Breast Medical Oncology

Attending the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium for the past two years as a member of press is always a very pleasing and rewarding experience. As some of you may know, I'm a semi-professional blogger and very active on Twitter and Facebook.

One thing that I learned from my press activities is that the stereotype of journalists is not necessarily true. There are many talented people, who report accurately, and are often critical about conference presentations. Journalists have an important duty to ensure their messages are correct. I also think that MD Anderson's communication office does a very good job coordinating press activities. 

For successful message delivery, coordination is important to make sure the conference presenter and journalist communicate well. Not all journalists have a scientific or medical background, so it's important that conference presentations are accurate, but simple enough for a layperson to understand.