Screening can prevent colorectal cancer through the detection and removal of precancerous growths (polyps), as well as detect cancer at an early stage, when treatment is usually less intensive and more successful.

People living in rural areas are much less likely to undergo screening due to a number of barriers, but some rural clinics have achieved high colorectal cancer screening rates despite such constraints. 

Dr. Jennifer Weiss of the University of Wisconsin-Madison joins the podcast to talk about how these clinics have been successful in “developing relevant, impactful, and sustainable approaches to increasing colorectal cancer screening in rural communities.” 

The American Cancer Society recommends regular colorectal cancer screening for people at average risk starting at age 45: https://www.cancer.org/healthy/find-cancer-early/american-cancer-society-guidelines-for-the-early-detection-of-cancer.html. 

4:45 – Jennifer Weiss, MD, MS is Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She’s a two-time American Cancer Society grantee.

5:21 – Why she has described colorectal cancer as the “most preventable, but least prevented cancer” 

8:15 – The American Cancer Society recommends regular colorectal cancer screening for people at average risk starting at age 45

13:19 – On why where you live can impact access to colorectal cancer screening

 16:23 – Some rural clinics are doing better than others in terms of colorectal cancer screening and outcomes…

20:11 – …why is that? What are they doing right?

22:58 – A great real-life example of a rural clinic boosting screening rates 

29:05 – Gaps that she hopes her research will fill

30:23 – What she’s most excited about

33:18 – A message she’d like to share with cancer patients, survivors and caregivers

“The most preventable, least prevented cancer”

When Delaram Cavey was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer seven years ago, she was fortunate to have two wonderful daughters to help her along her journey. 

Delaram and her older daughter, Catherine Cavey, joined the podcast to share the story of Delaram’s cancer diagnosis and treatment.

They also talked about how the cancer experience has sparked an interest in science in their family. Catherine has created an educational resource to raise awareness of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations, and they’ve founded GoMENA to create pathways for immigrant girls of Middle Eastern and North African descent to become engineers in the United States (https://gomena.us/). 

Delaram Cavey is a career member of the United States foreign service. Her daughter, Catherine Cavey, is in the 10th grade at Edison High School in Fairfax, Virginia.

5:09 – The story of Delaram’s lung cancer diagnosis

9:08 – Catherine on her memories of her mom’s diagnosis

12:54 – What it was like for Delaram, as a never smoker, to learn she has lung cancer

13:46 – How the cancer journey brought their family closer together 

17:05 – How Catherine has helped raise awareness of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) mutations

20:40 – How her mom’s experience has impacted Catherine’s career goals

23:42 – On living your best life, every day

28:46 – Advice from Catherine for other children whose parents are diagnosed with cancer

29:36 – Why they founded GoMENA to create pathways for immigrant girls of Middle Eastern and North African descent to become engineers in the United States
https://gomena.us/

Stories from a mother and daughter who’ve faced lung cancer as a family

Elyse Park, PhD, is Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Health Promotion and Resiliency Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Associate Director of Survivorship Research, and Psychosocial Services for the MGH Cancer Center Survivorship Program. Her most recent American Cancer Society grant focuses on developing a health insurance navigation program for childhood survivors.

Travis Baggett, MD, MPH, is Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Director of research at Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, and an MGH research scholar. His ACS grant supports research into lung cancer screening navigation for homeless people.

Sanja Percac-Lima, MD, is Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, a primary care physician at the MGH Chelsea Community Health Care Center, and physician leader for cancer outreach at MGH Cancer Center. A former ACS grantee, her research focuses on cancer prevention in ethnic and racial minorities.

5:42 – Dr. Park on her research into lung cancer screening, helping smokers quit, and helping survivors cope with stress and enhance their resiliency

8:46 – Dr. Percac-Lima on her research into alleviating disparities in cancer care and screening in vulnerable populations 

11:39 – Dr. Baggett on a patient navigation program to help current and former homeless individuals to quit smoking and get lung cancer screening

14:32 –Taking behavioral interventions to the next level

17:14 –Reducing colorectal cancer screening disparities through patient navigation 

22:09 –The encouraging progress there has been in the recognition of health equity issues

29:05 – Dr. Park on helping cancer survivors to improve their access and use of health insurance

33:38 – On the benefits of patient navigation during the COVID-19 pandemic

38:09 – On social justice and the work of the homelessness housing and health lab

41:41 – Why Massachusetts General Hospital is such a wonderful research environment

48:32 – The impact of ACS funding on their research

53:05 – A message for cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers

Cancer care for the homeless, patient navigation during COVID-19, lung cancer screening, and more

Finding out that a loved one has cancer can bring many changes. Doctors and nurses receive years of training in patient care, but family caregivers are often thrust into this role overnight with no training on the critical processes that their loved ones depend on them to do properly every day.

Rachel Cannady—as Strategic Director of Cancer Caregiver Support at the American Cancer Society—creates resources that empower caregivers with the resources and information they need.

Visit https://cancer.org/caregivers to learn more about what to expect if you become a caregiver for a person with cancer, and get tips for making sure that you take care of yourself as well.

Among the resources there are the Interactive Caregiver Resource Guide and the Caregiver Support Video Series.

The Interactive Caregiver Resource Guide is a comprehensive tool to help you learn how to care for yourself as a caregiver, better understand what your loved one is going through, and develop skills for coping and caring. It can be accessed or downloaded here: https://www.cancer.org/content/dam/cancer-org/cancer-control/en/booklets-flyers/american-cancer-society-caregiver-resource-guide.pdf
 
The Caregiver Support Video Series provides educational support to caregivers as they assist with the everyday needs of cancer patients and provide self-care techniques to improve their quality of life. Short videos provide guidance related to, for example, drain care, managing side effects, and managing medication. It’s available at https://www.cancer.org/treatment/caregivers/caregiver-support-videos.html. 

2:20 – Creating evidence-informed resources for cancer caregivers

4:12 – On the village of cancer care in the United States

6:27 – “The bigger the village, the better the help” Some of the many responsibilities of cancer caregivers—information seeking, emotional support, decision making, navigating financial concerns, etc. 

9:53 – On findings from the National Quality of Life Survey for Caregivers, a study that followed a group of caregivers over eight years

16:01 – “Nearly 50% of the caregivers at post-diagnosis said that they need help helping their loved one deal with the emotional stress of cancer.”

17:30 – There’s also a positive benefit from providing care – caregiving can create meaning in people’s lives

20:33 – The Caregiver Resource Guide, the Caregiver Support Video Series, and other resources developed through the American Cancer Society’s Caregiver Support Program
https://www.cancer.org/treatment/caregivers.html 

29:16 – How these resources can empower caregivers and help them feel more confident, prepared, and at ease

31:20 – On the impact of COVID-19 on cancer caregiving

Caring for caregivers: How the American Cancer Society helps people caring for someone with cancer

The St. Baldrick's Foundation, the largest charitable funder of childhood cancer research grants, and the American Cancer Society, a health organization dedicated to eliminating cancer, formed a partnership in 2019 to fund grants that will accelerate childhood cancer research with the goals of understanding and discovering new treatment options and improving care and survival in children with cancer. 

Kathleen Ruddy, St. Baldrick’s Foundation CEO, joined the podcast to talk through the goals of this unique partnership. “Why do some patients respond better than others to a particular treatment? Why does one treatment cause more late effects than another? What else can we learn to speed up progress, to cure more children, more effectively, and less harshly?”

Then two of the grantees who have been funded through the partnership talked about what they hope to accomplish. 

Yael P. Mossé, MD, is Associate Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania and Director of the Neuroblastoma Developmental Therapeutics Program, as well as a pediatric oncologist at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Dr. Mossé’s grant is focused on improving patient outcomes for ALK mutant neuroblastoma through precision molecular targeting.

E. Anders Kolb, MD, is Vice Chairman for Research and Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University, as well as Director of the Nemours Center for Cancer and Blood Disorders at Nemours/Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children. Dr. Kolb’s study aims to validate the detection of novel biomarkers for the Pediatric Acute Leukemia (PedAL) Initiative Sub-trials.

0:00 – Kathleen Ruddy, CEO of St. Baldrick’s Foundation

10:25 – Yael P. Mossé, MD, and E. Anders Kolb, MD

11:29 – Drs. Mossé and Kolb on why, “in pediatric cancer care, clinical trial participation is the standard of care”

13:31 – Dr. Mossé on how her team is “bringing the science to the patient” to learn how children with neuroblastoma respond (or don’t respond) to treatments

15:57 – Dr. Kolb on why it’s so important, and challenging, to bring precision medicine approaches to childhood cancer treatment

18:37 –Dr. Mossé explains the goal “to bring the science to the clinical trials in real time and not for there to be a lag”

21:38 – Dr. Kolb highlights how revolutionary it is for Dr. Mossé to change a clinical trial based on data emerging in the lab

23:26 – Dr. Kolb explains how “the AML that kids get is nothing like the AML that older adults get” and why this matters for drug development

27:43 – “We as pediatricians are taught early on,” notes Dr.  Mossé, “that kids are not small adults, and it really is the same for pediatric cancer.”  

30:17 – Dr. Kolb on the inspiration he drew from an initiative by St. Baldrick’s Foundation called Project:EveryChild, and describes his new study: “what we hope is that we will be as successful in relapse as we have been in newly diagnosed AML”

32:25 – Dr. Mossé on the value of collecting tissue over time, including at relapse, and how a major part of her new study is using liquid biopsies to collect samples in a less invasive way 

34:43 – Dr. Kolb on the impact of this funding: “If we’re successful, we’re going to be able to rapidly screen for relevant biomarkers and we’re going to be able to enroll kids in the therapy that has the highest potential to provide benefit.”

37:46 – Dr. Mossé describes how this funding will support her research: “My hope and my expectation is to make a really big difference for a small subset of patients. I think that’s where cancer biology has turned now—one disease is not defined by its histology; it’s defined by its underlying molecular biology.”

40:29 – A message they’d like to share with children going through cancer treatment and with their parents and families

Maximizing what's learned from clinical trials in children

A new publication by six current and former American Cancer Society grantees describes the challenges faced by early-career investigators as a result of the pandemic and offers recommendations “to help institutions and individuals develop effective strategies to promote success and career advancement.”

They joined the TheoryLab podcast to talk about key takeaways from their article, which “highlights the aftermath of the pandemic on work–life balance, promotion, tenure, funding, networking, and mentoring, and make recommendations that can help remediate these problems.”

“Overstretched and overlooked: solving challenges faced by early-career investigators after the pandemic” was published in the journal Trends in Cancer: (https://www.cell.com/trends/cancer/fulltext/S2405-8033(21)00158-8)

3:41 – Brock Humphries, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan. 

Priscilla Hwang, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in Biomedical Engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Aga Kendrick, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow at University of California, San Diego Medical Center.

Rajan Kulkarni, MD, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Dermatology at Oregon Health and Science University.

Rachel Pozzar, PhD, is a nurse scientist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Instructor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Rebeca San Martin, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

5:10 – What does it mean to be an “early-stage cancer researcher?” 

9:56 – The unique challenges faced by early-career scientists

15:01 – How the American Cancer Society encouraged a conversation about how to surmount these challenges

16:33 – Some of the most striking things they learned from each other

22:47 – Productivity issues faced by early-stage researchers

24:19 – How cancer research labs have functioned during the pandemic

29:35 – How the pandemic has impacted the tenure clock for clinician scientists 

34:21 – Ways to promote mental health among early-career investigators

37:36 – Some concluding thoughts about improving the environment for early-stage cancer researchers

40:26 – Their message for cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers

“Overstretched & Overlooked: Solving challenges faced by early-career scientists after the pandemic”

“More than 50% of cancer survivors report problems paying medical bills, financial distress, or delaying and/or forgoing medical care in the past year.”*

The financial burden of cancer can affect survivors for years. And it can affect anyone: a cancer diagnosis as a young adult can have financial ramifications that can change the course of a person’s life; a diagnosis for someone who’s retired and on a fixed income can pose problems that nobody should have to face. The cost of cancer treatment also deepens disparities—not everyone can afford the most effective treatments.

Stacie Dusetzina, PhD, and Robin Yabroff, PhD, are two of the leading voices on research on the financial burden of cancer. They joined the podcast to discuss prescription drug coverage in America, problems that cause financial challenges for people with and without insurance, and potential policy solutions. 

Stacie Dusetzina, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Health Policy and an Ingram Associate Professor of Cancer Research at Vanderbilt University.

Robin Yabroff, PhD, is the Scientific Vice President of Health Services Research in the Surveillance and Health Equity Science team at the American Cancer Society.

*Yabroff, K.R., Zhao, J., Han, X. et al. Prevalence and Correlates of Medical Financial Hardship in the USA. J GEN INTERN MED 34, 1494–1502 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-019-05002-w


2:12 – Pain points in prescription drug coverage for Americans – for infusion therapies…

7:39 – …and for orally administered therapies

12:24 – Why it can be hard to predict financial toxicity

13:48 – An example that hits close to home – a metastatic breast cancer patient with Medicare Advantage

17:33 – The financial implications of being diagnosed with cancer when young…of paying for cancer therapies when retired and on a fixed income…and of dealing with the costs of chronic illness

22:42 – Solutions! 
“The most obvious one to me is fixing the Medicare Part D policy to limit total out-of-pocket spending…”
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2027580

25:34 – Ways to reduce the burden of high deductible plans 

27:54 – “Despite how dire the situation you describe is, it’s actually worse.” 
How new advances in treatment will worsen cancer disparities unless we take action

29:30 – Evidence showing that Medicaid expansion helps, but “making care affordable is going to take a lot more than Medicaid expansion”

31:11 – “We’ve got to stop paying for the stuff that doesn’t work if we want to have better coverage for the stuff that does work.”

37:04 – Why cancer prevention strategies are key

39:00 – Advice for newly diagnosed cancer patients and their families for dealing with the financial cost of cancer

Fixing prescription drug coverage and reducing the financial burden of cancer

According to American Cancer Society researchers, in the United States in 2021, there will be an estimated 281,550 new cases of invasive breast cancer diagnosed in women.*

Finding breast cancer early and getting state-of-the-art cancer treatment are the most important strategies to prevent deaths from breast cancer. Breast cancer that’s found early, when it’s small and has not spread, is easier to treat successfully. Getting regular screening tests is the most reliable way to find breast cancer early. The American Cancer Society has screening guidelines for women at average risk of breast cancer, and for those at high risk for breast cancer: https://www.cancer.org/cancer/breast-cancer/screening-tests-and-early-detection/american-cancer-society-recommendations-for-the-early-detection-of-breast-cancer.html.

Two breast cancer researchers joined the podcast to discuss screening for the early detection of breast cancer.

Anne Marie McCarthy, PhD is a cancer epidemiologist and assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine. She is the recipient of an American Cancer Society Research Scholar Grant to fund her research into “A Precision Medicine Approach to Breast Cancer Early Detection.”

Lauren Teras, PhD, is a senior scientific director of epidemiology research in the Population Science team at the American Cancer Society. 

7:43 – Important things to know about breast cancer risk

9:55 – Why mammography is recommended for all women - “Any woman that has breasts should think about screening for breast cancer with mammography on a regular basis”

12:50 – But mammography screening isn’t necessarily enough for all women

18:26 – On the challenges of mammography screening and aggressive cancers

23:21 – On the association of breast density with cancer risk

26:48 – Women who could benefit from more intensive screening

29:46 – On being the best advocate for yourself (What do recommendations and high-risk categories mean for an individual?)

34:45 – A message for breast cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers

35:56 – The impact of American Cancer Society funding on Dr. McCarthy’s research

* https://www.cancer.org/content/dam/cancer-org/research/cancer-facts-and-statistics/annual-cancer-facts-and-figures/2021/cancer-facts-and-figures-2021.pdf

Improving our understanding of  risk factors for breast cancer sub-types

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among both men and women in the United States and worldwide. Small cell lung cancer comprises 15-17% of lung cancer cases, and it is the most aggressive subtype of lung cancer, growing rapidly and spreading to other organs quickly. 

Luke Hoeppner, PhD, received American Cancer Society funding to test whether therapeutically targeting a specific molecular pathway inhibits small cell lung cancer growth. 

Dr. Hoeppner’s lab was the first to report that activation of this particular pathway, called dopamine signaling, inhibits other forms of lung cancer growth. By therapeutically altering the dopamine signaling pathway, he hopes to inhibit small cell lung cancer progression and drug resistance, facilitating further advancement to new treatments.

For more information about lung cancer, visit https://www.cancer.org/cancer/lung-cancer.html. 

Luke Hoeppner, PhD, is Assistant Professor and leader of the Cancer Biology research section at The Hormel Institute, University of Minnesota. 

5:09 – What is small cell lung cancer? What vital statistics about it should we know?

5:57 –What is the standard therapy for small cell lung cancer patients?

8:13 – Why is it so hard to treat?

10:04 – “Another way to put it is…”

13:59 – Why drug resistance is such an important area of research for small cell lung cancer

15:42 – “We’re trying to focus on understanding what in particular small cell lung cancer cells are doing to evade chemotherapy, and is there a combination treatment that we could add to chemotherapy that would prevent (resistance)?”

16:18 – On his lab’s novel approach to combatting resistance

24:17 – What are the therapeutic implications? 

25:05 – Why he’s optimistic about this line of research 

26:31 – On how American Cancer Society funding has impacted his research

27:18 – A message he’d like to share with cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers

What causes  small cell lung cancer  growth and resistance?

When a cancer patient has a serious diagnosis, clinicians and families can struggle with how patients experience hope. 

Three distinguished palliative care physicians and researchers joined the podcast for a conversation about their recent paper in JAMA titled, “Holding Hope for Patients with Serious Illness” (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2784454).

Drs. Abby Rosenberg, Robert Arnold, and Yael Schenker shared their own experiences treating seriously ill patients and talked about how we can navigate the tension between appreciating the potential therapeutic benefit of hope and being concerned about perceived unrealistic hopes:

“Rather than being concerned that hope is either so fragile that it can be lost, or so powerful that it can overwhelm decision making, clinicians should remember that hope is protective, if not necessary, for managing serious illness. Holding complex, flexible, and diverse hopes enables patients to believe in the unlikely while simultaneously accepting the inevitable. The role of clinicians is to support both.”

Abby Rosenberg, MD, MS, MA, is a pediatric oncologist and palliative care physician and researcher at the University of Washington, where she directs the pediatrics component of the Cambia Palliative Care Center, and Seattle Children’s Research Institute, where she directs the Palliative Care and Resilience Lab.  She has an American Cancer Society Research Scholar Grant to study “Resilience Outcomes Among Adolescents and Young Adults with Advanced Cancer.”

Robert M. Arnold, MD, is a palliative care physician, Distinguished Professor of Medicine, and Chief of the Palliative Care Section at the University of Pittsburgh. He previously served as a member of the American Cancer Society’s palliative care peer review committee.

Yael Schenker, MD, MAS, is a palliative care physician, Professor of Medicine, and Director of the Palliative Research Center (PaRC) at the University of Pittsburgh. She is a past recipient of American Cancer Society research funding, which supported her study of “Primary Palliative Care for Patients with Advanced Hematologic Malignancies.”

3:27 - The therapeutic benefit of hope and why it’s helpful to patients and caregivers

5:12 – Why clinicians sometimes feel the need to “correct” a patient’s hope

8:56 – How physicians can address the tension of appreciating the potential therapeutic value of hope but being concerned about perceived unrealistic hopes 

10:50 – On how physicians can help patients diversify and increase their hopes

6:24 – How they became interested in this topic and decided to explore this topic in a broader way

17:35 – Advice they would share with someone in medical school who might someday treat patients with a poor prognosis

19:03 – A message for caregivers of a patient with a terminal illness

“Holding Hope for  Cancer Patients with Serious Illness”

In this episode of the TheoryLab podcast, two American Cancer Society grantees discussed key takeaways from their recent publications. 

In the first part of the conversation, which is intended for a lay audience, Dr. Joshua Andersen and Dr. Bhuminder Singh talked about targeted therapies, treatment side effects, and drug resistance.

Then they moved into a more technical discussion of their recent papers. 

Dr. Andersen recently published findings showing that “TNK1 is a ubiquitin-binding and 14-3-3-regulated kinase that can be targeted to block tumor growth.”
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25622-3

Dr. Singh published a study recently showing that “Induction of apically mistrafficked epiregulin disrupts epithelial polarity via aberrant EGFR signaling.”
https://doi.org/10.1242/jcs.255927 

Joshua L. Andersen, PhD, is Associate Professor of Biochemistry at Brigham Young University. He is a two-time American Cancer Society grantee. 

Bhuminder Singh, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Medicine and Cell and Developmental Biology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and he is also a two-time American Cancer Society grantee.

1:25 – Dr. Andersen explains why his lab is focused on improving targeted therapies

2:31 – Dr. Singh describes how his research is focused on addressing drug resistance in colorectal cancer

4:28 – Dr. Andersen dives into his lab’s new Nature Communications paper on a new cancer driver—"it’s been probably the most rewarding project that I’ve been a part of in my career”

8:11 – Dr. Singh asks a few questions about the paper: “Are there any mutations in TNK1 in human cancer?”

10:01 – What ubiquitinated proteins was it binding to?

11:44 – Is TNK1 itself ubiquitinated in certain conditions?

12:49 – Dr. Singh explains takeaways from his paper, “Induction of apically mistrafficked epiregulin disrupts epithelial polarity via aberrant EGFR signaling”

19:16 – Follow-up questions from Dr. Andersen: “How could the mistrafficking of a single ligand affect its localization so dramatically?”

22:04 – “That has to send a signal then to start trafficking the intracellular EGFR out to the apical side of the cell, right?”

27:49 – “As someone who hasn’t really thought about cell polarity very much inside a solid tumor, what would be the effects of mistrafficking in terms of the architecture of a solid tumor?”

31:18 – The impact of American Cancer Society funding on their research

Targeted therapies, drug resistance, and two recent cancer research publications

People going through cancer treatment sometimes have cognitive changes such as trouble remembering, paying attention, or thinking clearly.

Drs. Judith Carroll and Kathleen Van Dyk are clinician scientists who help patients with cancer-related cognitive impairment and conduct research into what causes it, how to identify patients at risk for it, and how to reverse its effects. 

Judith Carroll, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Science at the Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, and she’s the term Endowed Chair of the George F. Solomon Professorship in Psychobiology at UCLA. She’s also a Member of the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology. She received American Cancer Society funding to support her research on “Biobehavioral Vulnerability to Accelerated Aging In Breast Cancer Survivors” from 2016-2020.

Kathleen Van Dyk, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Science at the Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, and she’s a practicing neuropsychologist. She was an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow, studying “Cognitive Decline in Breast Cancer Survivors,” from 2017-2019.

INCIDENCE AND NATURE OF THE PROBLEM
2:09 – What is “cancer-related cognitive impairment?” Is it the same as “chemo brain?” 

3:12 – How common is it?

4:41 – What kind of symptoms does it produce?

CONTRIBUTING FACTORS AND MECHANISMS
6:54 – Is cancer-related cognitive impairment a side effect of cancer? Is it caused by certain treatments?

12:11 – How has COVID impacted cognitive impairment among breast cancer survivors?

14:22 – On the biology of aging and how cancer could accelerate the aging process

TREATMENT
17:48 – Is cancer-related cognitive impairment reversible?

22:04 – On the exciting potential of sleep interventions

23:54 – Understanding the effects of endocrine therapies on brain function

CLOSING THOUGHTS

25:42 – How ACS funding has impacted their career and research

29:40 – A message they’d like to share with cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers who are concerned about cancer-related cognitive impairment

Cancer-related cognitive impairment

Corinne Leach, PhD, MPH, MS, who leads cancer survivorship research at the American Cancer Society, joined the podcast to discuss her recent publication on the rise of mental health distress during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Using data from the American Cancer Society Cancer Prevention Study-3 (CPS-3) cohort, Dr. Leach and collaborators “identified factors associated with increased depression and anxiety during the pandemic, including sociodemographic characteristics, stressors, and comorbid conditions associated with increased risk for poor COVID-19 outcomes.”* They also presented findings related to financial stressors and looked at long-term implications.

For resources and information to help you cope during and after cancer treatment, please visit: https://www.cancer.org/treatment/survivorship-during-and-after-treatment.html

Dr. Leach is Senior Principal Scientist of Behavioral Research in the Population Sciences group at the American Cancer Society. She serves as the Principal Investigator of the American Cancer Society (ACS) survivorship cohorts, including the Studies of Cancer Survivors and the Cancer Survivor Transition Study.

3:13 –Pandemic-related stressors that have been associated with greater levels of anxiety and depression

8:09 – Her recent study on how our mental and physical health prior to the pandemic factored into our ability to deal with the psychological stress of the pandemic

10:57 – On long-term implications for mental health

12:45 – A snapshot of what cancer survivorship looks like in the United States

15:09 – On similarities between cancer survivors and participants her your study whose stressors were associated with anxiety and depression

17:25 – On post-treatment programs for cancer survivors

21:51 – Helpful ways to deal with significant life stressors

* http://pressroom.cancer.org/StressorsPandemicPredictors

The rise of mental health distress during the COVID-19 pandemic

The first few minutes of this conversation is for a lay audience, as Elham Azizi, PhD, and Charly Good, PhD, explained how they’re investigating what causes cancer to grow and spread and how to improve immunotherapy.

Then the discussion moved toward a scientific audience, as Drs. Azizi and Good shared recent findings and asked probing questions about future directions and opportunities in cancer research.

Elham Azizi, PhD, is a former American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow who is now an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Columbia University. She joined the podcast to share findings from her recent publication, “Mapping the evolution of T cell states during response and resistance to adoptive cellular therapy” (https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(21)01471-6#secsectitle0020). 

Charly Good, PhD, is an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Shelley Berger, PhD, at the University of Pennsylvania. She recently published research in Cell on “An NK-like CAR T cell transition in CAR T cell dysfunction” (https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)01331-3).

FOR A GENERAL AUDIENCE

1:25 – Dr. Azizi explains how her lab uses machine learning techniques and other cutting-edge technologies to understand what’s happening in the tumor microenvironment

2:47 – Dr. Good describes the focus of her research—using the patient’s own immune system to attack cancer 

FOR A SCIENTIFIC AUDIENCE

4:19 – Dr. Good describes takeaways from her recent publication on “An NK-like CAR T cell transition in CAR T cell dysfunction” (https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(21)01331-3)

7:25 – Dr. Azizi reacts to the paper…

8:51 – …and asks why some patients didn’t see an increase in NK receptor expression

12:22 – Dr. Azizi shares findings from her paper, “Mapping the evolution of T cell states during response and resistance to adoptive cellular therapy” (https://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(21)01471-6#secsectitle0020)

17:40 – Dr. Good asks: “Was it at all surprising to you when you first realized that the exhausted population was specific to the responders pre-infusion?”

22:10 – What’s next in machine learning?

26:03 – On the impact of ACS funding on their research

30:26– Why it’s an exciting time for cancer research

Journal Club: Recent findings in cancer immunotherapy

Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is rare and accounts for only 1% to 5% of all breast cancers, but it is considered an aggressive cancer because it grows quickly and is more likely to come back after treatment than other types of breast cancer. It causes symptoms of breast inflammation like swelling and redness, which is caused by cancer cells blocking lymph vessels in the skin causing the breast to look "inflamed." 

Gayathri R. Devi, PhD, is a two-time American Cancer Society grantee who recently received a Mission Boost Grant to “boost” her inflammatory breast cancer research and move it closer to patients. 

Dr. Devi joined the podcast to talk about risk factors for IBC, how it’s different from other breast cancer types, and recent advances in her lab with promising clinical implications. 

Dr. Devi is Program Director for the Duke Consortium for Inflammatory Breast Cancer, Associate Professor of Surgery and Pathology at Duke School of Medicine, and the Director of the Duke North Carolina Central University bridge office as part of the Duke School of Medicine Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute.

3:18 – The symptoms and signs of inflammatory breast cancer (IBC)

6:34 – How inflammatory breast cancer differs from other, more common breast cancers

9:36 – Risk factors for inflammatory breast cancer

14:22 –Instead of a single tumor mass, IBC patients have small groups of tumor cells called emboli found in the breast, skin and lymph nodes around the breast tissue. What are emboli? How do they form?

16:00 – Why do emboli form in this way?

18:51 – What makes these emboli resistant to treatment and able to spread?

21:43 – On her ACS-funded research, which focuses on the environment in which the IBC emboli form, in the breast. Why is the breast environment so important? 

28:35 – Adaptive stress response

31:15 – “I’ll give you an example here and talk a little about our research findings that are clinically relevant.”

38:25 – How do we target inflammatory breast cancer therapeutically?

40:47 – The 3M approach: Models, Mechanisms, and Measures

45:30 – If she could wave a magic anti-IBC wand, where would we be in 5 years?

48:27 – The impact that ACS funding has had on this area of research

49:54 – “Another very important distinction about ACS…”

51:47 – How inflammatory breast cancer recently affected her family

Improving treatment of inflammatory breast cancer

Former American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow Shin-Yi Lin talks with the American Cancer Society about:

1:38 – Her work on nematodes – creating new model organisms beyond C. elegans
5:50 – Next steps after her postdoctoral fellowship ends
7:35 – On how the phrase “work-life balance” understates the challenges faced by young scientists
11:00 – On the ACS-Jiler Professors and Postdocs conference and the benefits of attending earlier in the fellowship
19:17 – On her outreach experiences and the interaction between science and serving the communities we live in 
23:30 – How funders could support young scientists raising families
25:45 – On building connections with other Fellows

Shin-Yi Lin on the challenges faced by young scientists

Karen Freund, MD, MPH, an American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professor at Tufts University, discusses the rewards of being a mentor, her approach to mentoring, and how she would explain to a patient or survivor why it's so important to devote time to mentoring.

Karen Freund - On Mentoring

Jo Handelsman is director of the Wisconsin Institute of Discovery, and that's just the latest step in research career that began with an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellowship in 1984. 

She's a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor, co-founder of the Women in Science and Engineering Leadership Institute, and founder of the Wisconsin Program for Scientific Teaching. 

She was the associate director for science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and President Obama awarded her the Presidential Award for Science Mentoring. 

And she's nationally recognized for her work on understanding implicit biases.

ACS talked with her about:

4:38 - On her book, Entering Mentoring: A Seminar to Train a New Generation of Scientists – “We started interviewing faculty that we thought were great mentors, and all of them said, ‘I don’t know anything about mentoring; I just make a lot of mistakes.’ So we thought, ‘You know maybe we could do a little better than this,’ and that’s how we developed the course. It really evolved from what the mentors and mentees told us.”

8:58 – “I always tell junior faculty, if you can’t get other people to run the seminar, just run it yourself. I guarantee you’ll have people who want to take it, and you’ll learn so much from teaching it. And of course, you don’t really have to ‘teach’ it. I’ve taught it dozens of times now and I think I still learn almost as much the 20th time as I did the 1st time.”

10:35 – The story behind her landmark 2012 paper, "Science faculty’s subtle gender biases favor male students" – “If you imagine the hundreds of interactions that a given faculty member will have or that a student will have with all their faculty…If you imagine the males are getting just a little more time, or they’re being encouraged to try for slightly more ambitious internships, research experiences or jobs…You can see why men and women end up in very different places.”

13:05 – On why the study’s results didn’t surprise her – “This is an old story in the field of psychology, but when I would talk about studies like this (and there are hundreds of them, if not thousands, out there), scientists would always say, ‘But we’re trained to be objective, so we don’t do that.’ And of course, that shows a certain lack of understanding of what implicit or unconscious bias is. Science trains us in our cognitive minds to be objective but that doesn’t influence our biases. Frankly if it did, then we wouldn’t have to run blind experiments.”

15:45 – On the video interventions she’s developed to address the issue – “We think there are ways to address these implicit biases even if they’re kind of stuck in our deep brains and can’t be rooted out. We can certainly deal with their impact.”

19:20 – Advice she’d give to a young scientist on how to address implicit gender bias – “It’s not an accusation against white men. It’s not a plot to keep women and minorities out of academic science. This is just something all people do. And I think when you present it that way and say that becoming aware of it is a way to be more fair, get better people hired, better grants funded, and better papers accepted, it becomes a lot less threatening to people.”

23:20 – On her 3-year term under President Obama as the Associate Director for Science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy – “He really did seem to have a special respect for, appreciation for, and just kind of nerdy enjoyment of science. So it was always exciting to talk science with him and to develop policy for him and with him. That was probably one of the greatest privileges of my life—working for him.”

29:13 – On the impact of ACS funding at the start of her career – “Well I think the ACS postdoctoral fellowship made me very aware of the unity of biology very early on…biology is biology and what we learn in one aspect is probably going to have some relevance to other aspects of biology.”

Jo Handelsman - Mentor, Policymaker, Pioneer, Scientist

Treating patients at the St. Louis Veterans Affairs Medical Center led Ken Carson, MD, PhD, to investigate questions about racial disparities in treatment of patients with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma.

He still sees patients once a week, and his success as a researcher has led him to Flatiron Health, where he serves as senior medical director and focuses on real-world evidence generation.

1:15 – On his ACS-funded research on “racial disparities in outcomes among patients who have a common form of lymphoma” 

4:50 – On transitioning to doing big data work and his work at Flatiron Health – “The ultimate objective is having every patient’s experience help inform the next patient’s experience.”

11:10 – Advice for his younger self – “You don’t have to follow the traditional academic mold”

13:20 – What he’s most excited about – “As we better understand how to capture adverse events and treatment toxicities with big data, we’ll be able to explore that further with the ultimate goal of improving—not just response, progression-free survival, and overall survival—but also patient quality of life during treatment.”

Ken Carson - Using big data to help patients

Andras Heczey’s research focuses on directing the immune system to attack cancer cells in pediatric patients. He was the first to show that natural killer T cells could be used, once modified, to attack neuroblastoma cells.

Dr. Heczey—assistant professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital—talked about his ongoing clinical trial, the challenges of taking research out of the lab and into the clinic to benefit patients, and what message he would share with cancer patients and their families.

Developing New Treatments for Children with Cancer

If every cell in your body has the same DNA, the same 20,000 genes, then why are the cells different? Why are muscle cells different than neurons? The answer is epigenetics—changes in gene activity governed by influences outside the genes themselves. 

Bradley Bernstein, MD, PhD, is one of the world’s leading experts on epigenetics and cancer. In this episode he covered a lot of ground, but he used clear examples to help us understand what epigenetics is and why it’s critical to attacking cancer.

3:50 – There’s a copy of your genome in every cell. How do you fit a 6-foot long string of DNA inside a nucleus that’s about 6 microns? Epigenetics! 

8:30 – “Cancer has classically been thought of as a genetic disease, but…”

16:20 – On a new technology his team developed that enables them to see which genes are on and which genes are off in individual leukemia cells

19:45 – On how this tool could be used in therapies.

23:45 – On his lab’s progress over the past 15 years, as they’ve moved from studying the genome in yeast to breaking new ground in brain and gastrointestinal tumors

29:20 – On the impact of ACS funding on his lab

30:55 – What would he say to patients and caregivers dealing with cancer?

Dr. Bernstein is an institute member at the Broad Institute and a professor in the Department of Pathology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. He co-directs the Broad’s Epigenomics Program. He’s the Bernard and Mildred Kayden Endowed MGH Research Institute Chair. And he’s an American Cancer Society Research Professor.

“Cancer has classically been thought of as a genetic disease, but…”

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men (after skin cancer), and while it can often be treated successfully, metastatic disease remains challenging.

Lloyd Trotman, PhD—a former American Cancer Society grantee and Professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory—is trying to change that. 

He and his team recently developed the first genetic mouse model for the treatment and analysis of metastatic prostate cancer. Now they are seeking to translate their findings into patients to “turn lethal prostate cancer into a curable disease.”*

In this interview he talks about the challenges of metastatic prostate cancer, the exciting discoveries he and his team have made, and how his work is getting closer to patients.

*https://www.cshl.edu/research/faculty-staff/lloyd-trotman/

A Promising Approach to Curing Prostate Cancer

Around a quarter of people who smoke are non-daily smokers (those that smoke on some but not all days), and that number is increasing. The cancer risk of non-daily smoking is significant and existing treatments tend not to be tailored to this population. 

To address this issue, Bettina Hoeppner, PhD, an experimental psychologist and Associate Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, has developed a smartphone app, “Smiling Instead of Smoking,” to support non-daily smokers in quitting smoking. It serves “as a behavioral, in-the-pocket coach and uses positive psychology exercises to enhance quitting success.”

4:00 – What are “non-daily smokers?” Why is this a thing? 

5:40 – Health risks of non-daily smoking

6:51 – Populations that are more at risk, and why they may be more likely to be non-daily smokers

9:31 – Barriers to quitting that are unique to non-daily smokers

12:05 – Why she uses a smart phone app in her research to help non-daily smokers quit smoking

14:28 – How her “Smiling Instead of Smoking” app works

18:07 – Why she chose happiness as an approach; how positive psychology is a promising new approach to smoking cessation

22:03 – On positive early returns her team has seen from the app—confidence in quitting increased, urge to smoke decreased, and perceptions of smoking became less positive

25:40 – On the potential to reach vulnerable populations with this app

28:13 – The impact American Cancer Society funding had on her career, taking a chance on funding work that was perceived as high risk

30:03 – A message she’d like to share with cancer survivors and caregivers

Smiling Instead of Smoking: An app to help non-daily smokers quit

What does COVID-19 mean for cancer patients and caregivers? How can they lower their risk of infection? How can everyone help reduce risk for this vulnerable population? What should cancer patients do if they are undergoing treatment?

Len Lichtenfeld, MD, MACP, Deputy Chief Medical Officer for the American Cancer Society, provides important guidance and perspective.

2:26 – The need for people, and particularly those with cancer, to find reliable sources of information

3:51 – How there is much we don’t yet know about how COVID-19 affects cancer patients

5:20 – Why the mortality rate for cancer patients with COVID-19 is higher than it is for other groups

7:22 – How cancer patients can mitigate risk

8:39 – “Never has there been a time when my health, or your health, depends so much on others around us doing the right thing.”

10:35 – Why we all have a responsibility to help “flatten the curve”

13:16 – Should cancer patients give up social activities like dinner with friends?

17:12 – What does this epidemic mean for cancer patients currently undergoing treatment?

22:24 – The most important thing for us all to hold onto in the time ahead

What cancer patients and caregivers need to know about COVID-19

How is cancer research being affected by COVID-19? Susanna Greer, PhD—Scientific Director, Clinical Cancer Research and Immunology, at the American Cancer Society—describes conversations she’s had with ACS grantees across the country about how the pandemic has affected their research and their labs. 

Then we were joined (11:16) by Anthony Leung, PhD, an American Cancer Society grantee and an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Dr. Leung’s research focuses on how gene regulation impacts diseases such as cancer and virus infection. His work has never been so timely, and in this conversation he helps us understand why RNA is so important, what can happen when RNA regulation goes wrong, and how a deeper understanding of RNA could be critical to fighting cancer and COVID-19.

For information and resources about cancer and COVID-19, please visit cancer.org/coronavirus.

11:16 – How the research community has been impacted

15:07 – How the members of his research lab are supporting each other

18:35 – What is RNA? A really helpful analogy to help us understand why it’s so important.

21:18 – How a deeper understanding of RNA is so important to developing treatments against cancer and COVID-19

26:14 – How RNA regulation changes in stressed cells. One thing that cancer cells and cells infected by a virus such as COVID-19 have in common is that they are stressed.

29:30 – A particularly important way that protein is modified, and what that matters in cancer and COVID-19

31:58 –PARP inhibitors are currently approved by the FDA to treat multiple cancers. How do these drugs work? In which cancer types are they used? 

35:30 – How the protein modification that his lab studies is important, not just in cancer, but also in coronavirus infection. 

40:31 – A message he’d like to share with cancer survivors 

Photo credit: Harry Giglio/Hopkins Bloomberg Public Health
Also pictured: Judy Ochs

How a deeper understanding of RNA is crucial to fighting cancer & COVID-19

Working with community partners largely in faith-based communities, Cheryl Knott, PhD, and Nate Woodard are trying to increase the early detection of breast, prostate, and colorectal cancer.

With the support of American Cancer Society funding, their team trains church members to become community health advisers who deliver cancer early detection workshops in African American Churches.

Cheryl L. Knott, PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Behavioral and Community Health in the University of Maryland School of Public Health. Nate Woodard is a doctoral student and graduate research assistant in Dr. Knott’s lab.

3:52 – The Community Health Awareness, Messaging and Prevention (CHAMP) program

6:07 – The role played by African American churches in cancer health promotion

8:35 – On training church members to serve as community health advisors and present evidence-based cancer educational workshops

11:34 – The impact of these workshops

13:51 – The upside and downside of virtual training to compensate for the impossibility of face-to-face workshops during the pandemic 

20:15 – The challenge of scalability, given the importance of building relationships at a local level

22:24 – How to weigh cancer prevention needs and recommendations during a pandemic

28:32 – Their message for cancer patients and caregivers

Community Health Awareness, Messaging and Prevention during a Pandemic

A healthy diet, weight control, and a physically active lifestyle are important for everybody, but especially for cancer survivors, who are at higher risk for recurrence as well as second malignancies, heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, and functional decline. 

Nutrition scientist, Wendy Demark-Wahnefried, PhD, RD, has made significant advances designing and implementing home-based diet and exercise interventions for cancer survivors. Her team created a website, https://survivorshine.org/, that helps cancer survivors reach and maintain a healthy weight through diet and exercise. And she’s recruiting cancer survivors living in the Southeastern United States to participate in AMPLIFY, a research study that will help find out the benefits of a healthy eating and exercise program.

Wendy Demark-Wahnefried, PhD, RD, is an American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professor. She’s also Professor of Nutrition Sciences and Associate Director for Cancer Prevention and Control at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Her team is actively recruiting for a web-based clinical trial to improve diet & exercise health behaviors of cancer survivors: AMPLIFY@uabmc.edu or 1-833-535-7934 (https://amplifymyhealth.org/info).

2:22 - On how COVID-19 is affecting her work 

3:33 – Her breakthrough research in the early 1990s into why women that received adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer gained weight

7:05 – On sarcopenic obesity and the challenges and risks it poses for cancer survivors

9:14 – How her team has carved out a niche delivering home-based and web-based interventions to cancer survivors (as opposed to asking them to come to a clinic)

11:36 – The RENEW trial, an intervention where participants were mailed personalized diet and exercise plans and received telephone counseling from a health coach

16:05 – SurvivorSHINE.org, a website her team developed where cancer survivors can receive “personalized information and tools to help them reach and maintain a healthy weight through healthy eating and exercise”

18:45 – On why it’s so important for interventions to be scalable and to meet people where they are – their home

21:49 – With people across the United States sheltering in place, what cancer survivors can do right now, from their homes, to positively impact their physical well-being

24:20 – How ACS funding has impacted her research

Helping cancer survivors reach and maintain a healthy weight through diet and exercise

It started with a tweet, and in less than a month scientists, clinicians, and patients from over 100 centers in the United States and Canada came together to learn about the impact of COVID-19 on cancer patients. 

The COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium was formed to “collect granular, uniformly organized information to stimulate translational science and also to arm our treating providers with the most comprehensive and scientifically accurate evidence as rapidly as possible on cancer patients affected with the virus.”

It has already paid dividends. The consortium has already published evidence in a new paper in Lancet titled, “Clinical impact of COVID-19 on patients with cancer: a cohort study.”  

One of the principal authors of that paper joined us to discuss the work of the consortium.

Dimpy Shah, PhD—an American Cancer Society research grantee and Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at Mays Cancer Center, home to UT Health San Antonio MD Anderson—is a founding member of the COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium and serves on its steering committee, where she provides support, guidance, oversight of progress, and strategic future directions for the consortium.

4:20 – Why the COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium was formed and what they hope to accomplish.

6:58 – On the first evidence published by the consortium: “Clinical impact of COVID-19 on patients with cancer: a cohort study.” 

10:32 – How this global collaboration between different centers, community partners, and academic centers started with one tweet

15:03 – The mechanics (and magnitude) of the collaboration

17:17 – Early findings from the consortium that have benefited providers

21:19 – How the study could help develop strategies to decrease COVID-19-related risks for cancer patients

24:18 – How her current American Cancer Society-funded grant—which is focused on identifying cancer patients at higher risk of developing viral pneumonia following stem cell transplant—impacted her understanding of COVID-19 in cancer patients

26:44 – A message she’d like to share with cancer patients and caregivers

The COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium: A collaborative effort to help cancer patients

It’s difficult to comprehend how busy and densely packed it is on the inside of a cell. But understanding cell structure and organization is critical to developing new cancer drugs. 

Isaac Klein, MD, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Richard Young Laboratory at the Whitehead Institute, recently published findings that could have wide-ranging implications for the understanding of how cancer drugs work.  

Dr. Klein joined the podcast to explain why knowing how to get cancer drugs to exactly the right place in a cell—at a sufficient concentration—is critical to developing new and more effective cancer treatments. 

Isaac Klein, MD, PhD, is the American Cancer Society Layla Rohani Postdoctoral Fellow. His grant was specially funded by the Rohani Family and Friends. He is a physician and scientist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Center and Whitehead Institute at MIT.

4:11 – What is it like inside of a cell? Is organization a challenge for cells?

8:30 – A great analogy to help us understand cell organization and “condensates,” and why it’s important for some sub-compartments in cells not to have membranes walling them off from other parts of the cell.

13:47 – With no membranes, or walls, how do the contents of a condensate stay together?

19:50 – How cancer drugs are pulled into different condensates

23:02 – How cancer drugs get to the right spot in a cell, at the right concentration

26:23 – How the cancer drug Cisplatin works

31:07 – How their research findings hint at ways to make cancer drugs more powerful

35:03 – The impact of ACS funding on his research

36:24 – A message he’d like to share with cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers

A new understanding of cell organization with exciting implications for cancer drug delivery

Siran Koroukian, PhD, is a leading health policy and health services researcher whose work bridges health equity, big data, public health, and cancer. 

In her new study—funded through a collaboration between the American Cancer Society and Flatiron Health—Dr. Koroukian will use real world data from Flatiron’s national de-identified oncology datasets curated from electronic health records. Using clinical and genomic data gathered from routine care, she will explore patterns of genomic testing and precision medicine among patients with metastatic colon cancer.

With this research she hopes to “unravel new opportunities to improve the quality and equity of cancer care in colorectal cancer patients with metastatic disease, thus informing new interventions to improve cancer outcomes, and lead to a more equitable distribution of scarce healthcare resources.”

Siran Koroukian, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences at Case Western Reserve University. She also leads the shared resource on population cancer and analytics within the comprehensive cancer center. And she’s a four-time American Cancer Society grantee. She was recently the recipient of the American Cancer Society Flatiron Health Real-World Data Impact Award to advance patient-centric research.

2:23 – On informed cancer care and management and why it’s important for colorectal cancer patients

4:34 – Current treatment guidelines for colorectal cancer patients with advanced or metastatic disease

10:25 – Why are colorectal cancer patients who are young and healthy but underserved not receiving genomic testing and personalized therapy?

15:18 – On how inefficiencies in the health care system and the overuse of finite health care resources contributes to disparities 

19:48 – How her research into Flatiron Health datasets—which include patients of all ages with many kinds of insurance status—will show who is benefiting from precision medicine and who is not…

20:55 – …and how her research could help more patients benefit from precision medicine

23:22 – The impact of ACS funding on her career

26:00 – A message she’d like to share with cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers

Addressing disparities in genomic testing, personalized treatment, and outcomes

The troubling increase of early-onset colorectal cancer incidence and mortality has led to a shift in the age at which the American Cancer Society recommends beginning colorectal cancer screening, from age 50 to age 45.

What are some of the biological and environmental factors that might be behind this rise in early-onset colorectal cancer? How can we prevent it?

And what is behind the troubling racial and ethnic disparities we see in colorectal cancer incidence and mortality?

Joining us to take us through these issues is one of the leading researchers in this space. Peter Campbell, PhD, is Scientific Director, Epidemiology Research, in the Population Science Department of the American Cancer Society.

4:05 – The main areas of focus in his research program

7:26 – The differing incidence and mortality rates for colorectal cancer in younger and older Americans

10:57 – On racial/ethnic colorectal cancer disparities 

13:26 – Digging into the “why” behind some of these trends

19:36 – How the American Cancer Society is trying to reduce disparities and reverse the rise of early-onset colorectal cancer

23:04 – On the Colorectal Cancer Pooling Project

26:18 – Where his team hopes this work could lead in 5 years 

28:37 – Thoughts on tumor heterogeneity 
(One of the challenges of colorectal cancer is that not only are tumors different from patient to patient, but they differ within individual patients as time progresses. Could these molecular differences in tumors could be associated with lifestyle? How could we find out?)

31:58 – On what it might mean for colorectal cancer survival if there are associations between how we live and colorectal cancer heterogeneity

Investigating the rise of  early-onset colorectal cancer

While working as program directors at Georgia Institute of Technology’s VentureLab—Georgia Tech’s incubator for technology startups—Melissa Heffner and Sara Henderson saw an opportunity to create a program for female entrepreneurs. 

Female Founders is “a four-week virtual cohort experience where participants gain a foundational knowledge of lean startup methodology and customer discovery while tackling topics associated with the specific journey of female-led startups:" https://www.icorpssouth.com/female-founders-initiative. 

Ms. Heffner joined the TheoryLab podcast along with three participants in the program to share advice for evidence-based entrepreneurship and talk about the exciting technology that is behind their respective start-ups.

Melissa Heffner is a program director with Georgia Institute of Technology’s VentureLab and the co-creator of Female Founders.

Ana Luz Quiroga Campano, PhD, is a postdoctoral fellow in the Biological Systems Engineering Laboratory at Emory University and Georgia Tech. She’s also the CEO of SANICKA. 

Allyson Jennings McKinney is a PhD candidate in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. 

Kacie Kaile is a PhD candidate in Biomedical Engineering at Florida International University. 

5:03 – On the purpose and goals of the Female Founders program

5:49 – Why they saw a clear need for a program specifically for female entrepreneurs

9:54 – Some of the ways they’re helping to set female entrepreneurs up for success

11:08 – Allyson Jennings McKinney on what attracted her to Female Founders

12:44 – On Solopulse—an exciting new technology she’s developed that utilizes a single pulse of a wave to create images of the surrounding environment—and its potential clinical impact

16:10 – Dr. Ana Luz Quiroga Campano on how the Female Founders program has met her needs as a postdoctoral fellow

18:21 – On the precision chemo-immunotherapy software tool developed by her company, SANICKA 

21:45 – Kacie Kaile on how Female Founders has changed her entrepreneurial approach

23:37 – On a product she’s developed that provides a diagnostic assessment of tissue oxygenation using a smartphone with an add-on tool

28:43 – Dr. Quiroga on why scientists shouldn’t feel hesitant about becoming an entrepreneur when they have an idea

30:04 – Ms. McKinney with good advice on getting started as an entrepreneur

31:41 – Ms. Kaile on the benefits of starting a company with support from an academic institution

33:37 – Ms. Heffner with advice for cancer researchers thinking of starting a company in the oncology space

Female Founders:  Incubating women-led technology start-ups at Georgia Tech

American Cancer Society scientists and grantees discuss the most critical questions in cancer research -- in language that we can all understand.

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