Chapter 06: South Campus and New Research Initiatives to Drive Patient-Relevant Science
Files
Identifier
MendelsohnJ_01_20050103_C06
Publication Date
1-3-2005
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
John Mendelsohn, MD, Oral History Interview, January 03, 2005
Topics Covered
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center - Building the Institution; Building the Institution; Research; Definitions, Explanations, Translations; Discovery, Creativity and Innovation; Discovery and Success; On Research and Researchers; Professional Practice; The Professional at Work; Understanding Cancer, the History of Science, Cancer Research; The History of Health Care, Patient Care; Technology and R&D; Patients; Patients, Treatment, Survivors
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
John Mendelsohn, MD:
: But my main focus at MD Anderson has been to harness the science, and we have many more clinical trials going on than we did. And we’re developing the south campus now using some of the more traditional approaches. Using immunology. Understanding metastasis better. Have you been briefed on the south campus?
James Olson:
: I was down there with Gutterman [oral history interview].
John Mendelsohn, MD:
: That isn’t the way to meet the south campus. Gutterman is two standard deviations a minority here. Very interested in Gutterman. I wouldn’t use Gutterman as a main force in the book. But the south campus is a very exciting initiative and when we’re done I’ll give you a summary of it. But we’re developing – there was one building down there for metastasis three years ago and we’re going to have six buildings there for metastasis and this is a result of meeting with faculty and brainstorming, what is the research we can do in the next 10 years that will translate into better care for patients. Better treatment and diagnosis. So there is one building down there that has been developed for immunology and we’ve recruited a new head for immunology and we put together people from four different departments of immunology whose goal is to try to harness the patient’s immune system to treat the cancer. And we have the first positive vaccine study in the world that Jeff Meldrum did. That’s really important for you to look at. Patients with advanced leukemia who have failed all other forms of therapy. Half of them are still in remission from a vaccine. This is unheard of. This was the number one paper at the American Society of Hematology two years ago and the follow-up paper last year was really carefully scrutinized. And another building looking at molecular diagnostics. A huge new project on that. The [Clayburg] Foundation just gave us $5 million to kickstart that and we’re trying to find ways to analyze serum, blood, or the tumor to predict – serum to predict the presence of cancer in tiny amounts early before it’s big enough to cause trouble or pain or blocks an organ – and to predict which is the right therapy to give patients based on their molecular composition. We’ve talked about that. And then another new building with molecular imaging. A very important program that the NCI is interested in. A collaboration with GE. GE is investing over $30 million into this. The state is investing over $25 million, the city and the governor’s fund. The city has invested in this and the building will be imaging both heart disease and cancer. It’s a collaboration with the Houston Heart Institute and the Science Center.
James Olson:
: What does molecular imaging give a clinician that he wouldn’t have had before?
John Mendelsohn, MD:
: Right now, if you want to see if a patient is responding to therapy, you do it with a ruler. You do a CAT scan and you see it shrink 50 percent. It takes a while for the tumor to shrink. But if the chemo is working, within a day or two, things are going to change at the molecular level of a tumor. So you can do a PET scan before you start your chemo and do a PET scan two or three days later and you’ll be able to tell if the chemo is working or not. We believe that will happen. Right now, this is still a hypothesis.
James Olson:
: Do you see a point at which the chemo would be stopped?
John Mendelsohn, MD:
: Yeah. Right. So a woman taking Adriamycin, which can cause heart damage, make you lose your hair, make you throw up – all the complications-- it works in over half of breast cancers. Right now, do you know how we find out if it works in breast cancer patient? We try it in all breast cancer patients. And we can see – we could stop therapy in those who didn’t need it quickly. That’s one example. Another example. Suppose a person has cancer in their prostate, and we can get the original prostate specimen out, and it has high EGF receptors and a lot of markers that we think we can design therapy around. The disease progresses and now it’s spread into the bone and other parts of the body, but with PET scanning, we might be able to ask the question or with EGF receptors still high in that patient’s tumor or is there another oncogene product active in the tumor. And by putting the proper probes into the patient’s bloodstream and doing a PET scan, we can determine at a molecular level what’s going on in that tumor without having to repeatedly biopsy the patient over and over again, which is impossible. So that’s the kind of thing PET scanning will do for us. We’ll have a major investment. The fourth building is going to be in the area of molecular therapeutics. We’re just developing plans for that. Expanding the design of targeted treatments, which is already going on here, but emphasizing that. The fifth building is a proton therapy center. In this case, pairing up with Hitachi and this is pioneering research in radiotherapy rather than chemotherapy, using protons rather than photons to treat the tumor. Jim Cox [oral history interview] can give you the background on that. But you can give higher doses of radiation when you do that.
James Olson:
: If I might make my case – if or when my, this glioma of mine turns on again or begins to transform itself and I still have radiotherapy as an option, what would these protons do? What’s the advantage of that over an earlier form of radiotherapy I may have had.
John Mendelsohn, MD:
: What have you had so far?
James Olson:
: I’ve just had chemotherapy.
John Mendelsohn, MD:
: Chemotherapy. So, in the case of glioma, what were you grade two? Low grade. 1 or 2. You were two. Yeah. That’s a very good question. The glioma is still quite localized. We’d be able to give higher doses of radiation to that tumor than we would have if we had just used standard radiation without damaging the surrounding tissue. If the glioma has spread throughout the brain, I believe we could give higher whole brain radiation. There, you’re limited. If you give too much whole brain radiation, you’re going to do too much damage, so the thinking is that that isn’t worth it. And I don’t know much about that. So I will plead –
Recommended Citation
Mendelsohn, John MD, "Chapter 06: South Campus and New Research Initiatives to Drive Patient-Relevant Science" (2005). Interview Chapters. 1448.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1448
Conditions Governing Access
Open
