Chapter 21: Building Translational Research
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Description
In this Chapter Dr. Mendelsohn reviews the ambitious goals of the four (full time) MD Anderson presidents. He explains that he himself built on the achievements of Dr. R. Lee Clark and Dr. Charles LeMaistre with the aim of linking research to bedside care. He notes the research advantages of the legislation passed in the 90s that allowed patients to self-refer to MD Anderson. A broader range of patients enabled faculty to see patients at all phases of the disease cycle and to give complete care from diagnosis throughout the course of the disease, a goal that has required implementation of multidisciplinary care teams.
Identifier
MendelsohnJ_03_20121017_C21
Publication Date
10-17-2012
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
John Mendelsohn, MD, Oral History Interview, October 17, 2012
Topics Covered
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center - The AdministratorThe Administrator Growth and/or Change Portraits Professional Practice The Professional at Work Leadership The Business of MD Anderson Building/Transforming the Institution Multi-disciplinary Approaches Growth and/or Change
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Disciplines
History of Science, Technology, and Medicine | Oncology | Oral History
Transcript
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
How would you describe the big, hairy goals of each of the presidents, looking at it through that lens?
John Mendelsohn, MD:
I think Dr. Clark’s big, hairy goal was to create, out of nothing, a really important cancer center that was as good as any and was oriented toward both studying cancer and treating cancer, and he did that. I think one of Dr. LeMaistre’s major focuses was building stronger connections to the community. It was at the end of his 18 years as president, through a huge effort on the part of our community supporters and the Board of Visitors, MD Anderson had a bill passed which allowed self-referral, which changed things tremendously. Until then, a patient couldn’t call here for an appointment. Most doctors took care of the patient until the train wrecks occurred, then they’d call us with the a referral. That creates a certain kind of patient population you’re treating, primarily with advanced cancer. Then his other big area was building up prevention. When I came, my own experience has been in what’s called translational research. I liked the idea that much of the science here would be as focused as much as possible on bringing something to the bedside, and we expanded the clinical trials research program tremendously. I also wanted to take advantage of that self-referral and to change the vision of MD Anderson so that the average person in Houston today, if they get cancer, may think to themselves. “Maybe I ought to go to MD Anderson for my initial care.” Whereas I think the average person in Houston 20 years ago thought of MD Anderson as the place you go when their treatment hasn’t worked out well. I think it’s better to take care of the patient from the start. You learn more, and you help people more. We change the diagnosis when patients walk in the door somewhere around 5% of the time. Sometimes we send people out without cancer that came in with a label, “I’ve got cancer.” Those are wonderful events. A man called up saying, “My daughter has stomach cancer,” just in tears. We sent her out 5 days later with a diagnosis of a benign ulcer. If she had not come here, she would have had her stomach out. I think this happens because we’re specialized. We have so many really fine doctors that really understand their kind of cancer that we’re less likely to make mistakes like that. When I came here initially, I had to put a lot of resources into the pathology department and the radiology department in order to bring them up to snuff, because most of the resources had gone into medical oncology, surgical oncology, and radiation oncology. To provide a complete care of the patient, you need experience in all of the specialties. One of the reasons we grew so much is we started taking in more patients that didn’t fit any research protocol. They weren’t research patients. My point to the faculty was, probably 1/3 of those patients are going to need experimental therapy at some point in their care, and you’re going to have complete records on them. You’re going to know what their tumor looked like from the start, and you’re going to be able to study the natural history of cancer much better even though 2/3 of your patients get well and do well on what we call standard of care. And you can also improve standard of care. You can do research on how to do early cancer care better. A lot of the chemo that is given today in conjunction with surgery is given before the surgery to shrink the tumor. You can’t do that if you’re only seeing end-stage cancer. One of the things that developed while I was president was the attitude that we want to give complete care to the patient from the 1st day of diagnosis to when they’re either cured, or they’re a long-term survivor, or unfortunately when they die of their disease. The program of developing these multidisciplinary care centers had been started before I came, but I pushed that forward very aggressively, and we completed it. I think, we have created a situation where each doctor here becomes, after 4 or 5 years, a national and sometimes a world-class expert in what they’re doing, because they’re so focused and they have an outstanding team to work with.
Recommended Citation
Mendelsohn, John MD and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 21: Building Translational Research" (2012). Interview Chapters. 1437.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1437
Conditions Governing Access
Open
