Chapter 24: A New SPORE Grant Focused on Sarcoma; Grateful to Work at MD Anderson
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Description
Dr. Pollock reflects on the fact that he has more time now that he has stepped down from his role as head of the Division of Surgery. He would like to focus on sarcoma for the next decade and describes the $16 million SPORE grant (a SARC grant –Sarcoma Alliance for Research through Collaboration), that he was awarded in October 2012 in collaboration with researchers from many other institutions. He describes the projects included in this grant, explaining that the array of projects represents an integrated and multi-faceted attack on sarcoma.
In the last minutes of the interview, Dr. Pollock expresses his gratitude to MD Anderson for providing a research and clinical career that exceeded his “wildest fantasies.” He notes that “when you are finished changing, you are finished.”
Identifier
PollokRE_03_20121119-C24
Publication Date
11-19-2012
Publisher
The Making Cancer History® Voices Oral History Collection, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
City
Houston, Texas
Interview Session
Raphael Pollock, MD, Oral History Interview, November 19, 2012
Topics Covered
The Interview Subject's Story - Professional PathThe AdministratorThe ResearcherContributions OverviewActivities Outside InstitutionCareer and AccomplishmentsProfessional Values, Ethics, PurposeDedication to MD Anderson, to Patients, to Faculty/StaffPersonal Reflections, Memories of MD AndersonGiving Recognition
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:
Is there anything else that you’d like to add, though I guess I should ask you—before I ask you that final question—what are the projects that you are immediately going to be turning your attention to?
Raphael Pollock, MD:
Probably one of the things that I have observed now that I no longer have the responsibilities as division head, I have more time, even more time to spend with my patients and certainly more time for laboratory research. And I have a big responsibility on my shoulders—this $16 million SPORE grant involving MD Anderson, the University of Michigan, Mass General, and Brigham and the Farber and Stanford and Columbia. It’s a total of fourteen institutions, so running this research consortium and delivering on the premise is going to take a lot of time. This past year I also joined the Board of Scientific Counselors of the National Cancer Institute, and that also entails a lot of time. So I think that in some ways I’ve had this twenty-year period of time where I’ve been very involved in academic medicine administrative activities arguably, at least to some extent, at the expense of personal programmatic activities. I hope that my health is such that I have a good ten years ahead of me, and in that ten-year period of time I would like to really be able to focus on sarcoma as the disease that I have devoted my entire professional life to, introduced to it by some of my heroes in academic medicine. And I really hope that at the end of that ten-year period of time that when I trot off the playing field that the fans in the stands will be able to say—I’d love them to be able to say that the score was run up while Pollock was out there playing, but even if we’ve increased the score somewhat, I’ll be satisfied with that. So I’m looking forward to those opportunities and working with others. The SPORE has been great because it’s enabled me to exert that type of servant and matrix leadership model in yet another context, which is going to be so important if it’s successful.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Can you go into a little more detail about that?
Raphael Pollock, MD:
Yeah. There are sixty-one SPORE grants in the United States. This is a program that was started by the NCI in 1992. Anderson has been the most successful institution overall. The SPORE that I serve on is actually not sponsored by Anderson; it’s sponsored by a clinical trials group called SARC, which stands for the Sarcoma Alliance for Research through Collaboration. So it’s the only SPORE grant that is sponsored by a clinical trials group or a professional organization as compared to a cancer center or a medical school. So that’s one aspect that makes it very unique. It is one of now two sarcoma SPORES, and it includes intramural investigators from the National Cancer Institute, which is not the case in, I think, any other or most other SPOREs. We have projects that involve both adult and pediatric patients, which is another unique feature of this particular SPORE. So there are four projects, one of which is at MD Anderson. Two are at the University of Michigan, and one is split between Columbia University and Dana Farber Cancer Center at Harvard. And then there are four cores which are our support entities—an administrative core, where I provide the leadership; a tissue core here at MD Anderson; a clinical trials core that’s based out of Ann Arbor—I’m blocking on the fourth one. Then we have two developmental committees—one a developmental research project committee that has funds to enable early-to-mid-career investigators who have an interest in a sarcoma project to be funded for a period of time. And the leadership of that committee is based at Mass General. Then a career development award program, where the leadership for that committee is based at the NCI. So a lot of moving pieces knitted together into this matrix. So we have to prove to the National Cancer Institute that that conception will work.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So it’s sort of a consolidated push in sarcoma. So all these pieces really are moving in relation to one another.
Raphael Pollock, MD:
That’s right. So it’s about a thirty-five percent effort on my part. So it takes that much time.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
And so when did you receive that grant? That was just—?
Raphael Pollock, MD:
About two months ago that the funding finally came through.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
So it’s in the beginning stages. So when do you expect people to hit the ground on these different projects?
Raphael Pollock, MD:
We are now.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
You already are.
Raphael Pollock, MD:
Yeah. We are now. The meeting that I just came back from at Prague—we had two meetings of the entire group. And that means that we’re going to be that much closer tied to the National Cancer Institute because they have a very large meeting annually for all of the SPORE investigators and then with the tie-ins with the Board of Scientific Counselors. So the National Cancer Institute, over the past two years, has become a much bigger presence in my professional life on several different levels and venues. That is exciting to me because I’m coming back into something that in a way I didn’t really have as much time for when I had all the administrative responsibilities here for a department chair and a division head role. So I’m looking forward to this next chapter. I think we’re going to make a difference. It won’t be for want of trying.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Is there anything else that you would like to add before we bring the interview to a close?
Raphael Pollock, MD:
I would just close by saying that I feel extremely fortunate to have been able to be here at this institution. I’ve worked very hard on behalf of MD Anderson, but MD Anderson has worked very hard on behalf of me. It provided me with a clinical and a research career that totally exceeded my wildest fantasies as a medical student or as a resident. I had the chance to work with some of the very best people in the world in pursuit of these interests. I’m a member of the Women’s Faculty Committee, and we joke on the committee that I’m the only Anderson faculty member who’s been married to two faculty members at MD Anderson. I think that’s true. But it was through Anderson that I met my wife of whom I have this wonderful melded family with five children and a shared set of professional activities. So I feel, in the balance, extremely fortunate to have had the chance to be here and to pursue the things that were near and dear to my heart. That I may be retiring and actually leaving Houston at the end of the year is a little bit of a daunting process, but the show goes on. I still feel that I have some important things to contribute. As Benjamin Franklin says, “When you finish changing, you are finished.” So that’s one quotation from him that I feel very strongly about. One of his other ones that I like is, “A man wrapped up in himself makes for a very small package.” So I hope that with those two concepts in mind as I go forward, wherever I may be next year at this time, Anderson is always going to occupy a premier, special spot in my heart. It’s been a tremendous privilege to be here.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
Thank you very much, Dr. Pollock.
Raphael Pollock, MD:
Yeah. Thank you for the chance to put some of these thoughts forward.
Tacey Ann Rosolowski, PhD:
It’s been a pleasure. I’m turning off the recorder at 11:03. (End of Audio Session 3)
Recommended Citation
Pollock, Raphael E. MD and Rosolowski, Tacey A. PhD, "Chapter 24: A New SPORE Grant Focused on Sarcoma; Grateful to Work at MD Anderson" (2012). Interview Chapters. 1336.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mchv_interviewchapters/1336
Conditions Governing Access
Open
