Giulio F. Draetta, PhD, MD, Oral History Interview, August 12, 2021
Files
Loading...
Transcript
Nina Nevill [00:00:01]
Start that. And if you have any questions at any point, please feel free to ask. This is more like a conversation than an interview at all or to stop me to pause if you need. But if not, then I have a series of questions that we can talk through. And, hopefully, it’ll be a fun 20 minutes. So just for the sake of reading out the project, I’m Nina Nevill interviewing Dr. Draetta for an oral history project run by the Historical Resources Center at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. Dr. Draetta was first recruited to MD Anderson in 2011 as the Director for the Institute of Applied Cancer Science, and now works as a senior VP and chief scientific officer and as a professor of Genomic Medicine. And this session is being held virtually over Zoom. It is the first and only interview session. And today is August 12th, 2021. And the time is about 8:10 a.m. Again, thank you so much for devoting your time to the project today. And if you’re all right with it, we’ll just jump right in.
[00:01:19]
Giulio F. Draetta, PhD, MD
[00:01:22]
Yes.
[00:01:23]
Nina Nevill
[00:01:24]
Okay. The first questions I am asking are about this past year, 2020 and how MD Anderson as an institution has sort of handled some of the challenges, the progression of the global pandemic. So in your own words, if you could talk me through a little bit of how you believe the institution handled some of the earlier stages of the pandemic when things were just starting up. I’m thinking last year during the early spring of 2020.
[00:02:00]
Giulio F. Draetta, PhD, MD
[00:02:01]
Yeah, as you know, Nina, this situation has really been difficult for multiple reasons, but the advantage of being in an organization like MD Anderson, with the current leadership, is that I think people have continued to believe that they could help each other because they believe in the organization as a whole. And they have really stepped up their ability to react to these adversities and be able to really overcome the problems that we have experienced. Clearly, if I go back to the beginning of 2020, no one really had a very clear idea what might be happening. Since I’m originally from Italy, and I had family there, we really became aware early on of the severity of the disease, the lethality of the disease for many, particularly elderly people living in crowded environments in the north of Italy. And it became—in fact, on behalf of the whole team, I was manually collecting information on a daily basis at the beginning and sharing it with the leadership team on the increasing number of cases. Once the Johns Hopkins site became so efficient, and then we had the development of the Texas Medical Center that was not needed anymore, but at the beginning, it was so shocking to see how rapidly this would go.
[00:04:02]
I think we reacted extremely well. Thanks to Dr. Pisters and the colleagues in infectious diseases, some of the epidemiologists were able to intervene, I think, rapidly and create a moat around the clinical environment, limiting the clinical procedures to what was absolutely needed, trying to restrict access solely to personnel that was needed for clinical care and asking everybody else to work from home. Keep in mind that throughout this process, we were also able not to eliminate jobs and to really maintain everybody’s employment. And I think we achieved also—once we were able to institute all the protective measures that we had planned for are able to reopen within two months, including all of the research laboratories and environment, with the exception of those research activities that take place within the community or with community, with healthy community participants, where we still to date have a real challenge. What I’m worried about, of course, is that this recurrence of infection is occurring without a clear gap. So most likely say, we had one pandemic. It was solved and now we have another epidemic developing or where we have another double hit now where we had thought we were out of the woods, and we were really planning for the future and for a much brighter future. But the reality of the environment, the relatively low vaccination rates, the occurrence of this delta variant are bringing us back into, for example, as you have seen, restating the requirement for masks to be worn and really continue to emphasize importance of social distancing, and personal protective measures, and hygiene measures.
[00:06:25]
So I’m worried because not that we are doing this, and, of course, we are implementing, but I’m really concerned about the personal lives of our employees and the fact that many have children at home. And they were really hoping for a return to normality. And I don’t know how quickly we’ll be able to do that. But in terms of—yesterday, I was on another interview, I would score our employees a 10 out of 10, in terms of their ability to come together, to engage in the discussion, and then follow directions from the leadership in terms of what needed to happen and so on. Long term, I don’t know. There is a resilience here as we have experienced with other crisis. And as I said at the beginning, our employees believe in our organization. They believe in the mission, but they also believe that no one, at least from the data that we have, no one in the leadership team has anything in mind, but the health of our organization and our employees and our patients. But I think people will be worn out if we—we have to find ways of helping and perhaps helping even more.
[00:07:49]
Nina Nevill
[00:07:53]
Absolutely. It sounds like not every employee would say that about their institution, about their employer during this time, so that’s a great testament for MD Anderson. It sounds like, for the most part, the lack of layoffs and the way that a leadership sort of sprung into action was really positive. I guess I’m wondering if there’s anything you had to look back and do differently or anything that was learned maybe from the past year that could be applied to this sort of future wave with the Delta variant. Is there anything that comes to mind?
[00:08:31]
Giulio F. Draetta, PhD, MD
[00:08:35]
I’m not sure. I’m not sure. What I will love to be able to do more is, but, unfortunately, it is not happening, we’re not—while we’re able, of course, to intervene and we developed our own internal testing for viral infection, we haven’t been able to bring it to a different level. So many communities in Europe, particularly, have resorted to saliva testing and broad testing of all employees, not necessarily everybody coming on site or even working remotely doing the test every week, but through a sufficiently powered, statistically powered pool of individuals being tested at random so that we really monitor the overall incidence of infections in the population. And if it’s saliva testing, it’s much easier because people may not like to have a stick in their nose necessarily. So saliva testing with an appropriately powered system would allow us to get the true view of what the overall situation is and also start understanding how many of our clinical providers are carriers of infection, asymptomatic carriers. We don’t have that. So the inference we’re making is based on the positivity ratio of our employees returning from travel. That’s the only time when we require testing or quarantine. So you have a limited number of people and you could clearly see like, yesterday, there were like 16, and the day before 21, a month ago, it was 1 or 2. So you clearly see that the infection is spreading within our own community.
[00:10:38]
And also, along with that, we also have no evidence of nosocomial spreading so that people—you could see like, for example, five, six, seven people in the same floor, in the same area, being infected and symptomatic, but you wouldn’t test them unless they were symptomatic, you see. So there could be improvement to the process, and we could implement our laboratory testing strategy in a much more effective way. The other thing that is hitting us is the fact that we don’t have sufficiently automated systems to manage and everything is all about people pulling up their sleeves. We really have to put an effort—I talk a lot about—when they talk about innovation, to me, it’s not innovation in the sense of the kind of research that is done in our labs, where you don’t know what you don’t know, and you’re looking for the unknown. Yet, I think we pretty much know what’s needed to become like an Amazon, to become like Walmart, in terms of being able to manage people and processes.
[00:11:55]
My brother through the pandemic ended up working for Amazon in Italy. And the logistic sense of managing all these people working around—I mean, they monitor their dispatchers, their drivers, through cell phones. They can exactly know where everybody is at any given time, and they can act on it, so we could implement measures that would allow us to regulate access without wanting to, of course, look like big brother, but really be a lot more efficient in managing people, flow, information. The best thing we have is our phone with Everbridge for emergencies. But I think process improvement would really help us.
[00:13:07]
Nina Nevill
[00:13:11]
Is that something that feels attainable for an institution the size of MD Anderson?
[00:13:20]
Giulio F. Draetta, PhD, MD
[00:13:20]
I think it is as long as you overcome resistance to change. The good thing about MD Anderson is there is a good sense of community because people tend to be hired and stay for a long period of time, particularly on the administrative side. The bad thing is that people have been here forever, and they may not be aware of what’s going on in other areas. That’s why I believe in turnover because you will learn. Every new person you bring in is going to bring a different perspective, so I’m very excited by the recruitment of leaders like David Jaffray, who’s bringing a completely new perspective on the digital experience. So I’m hopeful at this point.
[00:14:22]
Nina Nevill
[00:14:25]
Well, in terms of community, that seems to be something that others have brought up as well, that kind of makes MD Anderson unique. I’m wondering if there any other aspects or things that make MD Anderson or have made MD Anderson unique to other institutions over the past year, anything that really set them sort of apart from the rest.
[00:14:47]
Giulio F. Draetta, PhD, MD
[00:14:58]
I think it’s our relentless focus on patients and really starting from the considerations associated with the vulnerabilities of our patient population and really driving consensus across functions that we have, functions that normally would monitor money flow have come together with a clear understanding that this is not about how, oh, are we going to make money, but how we do the right thing for our patients at all costs. And the second is really related to this because it’s all about caring. It’s about employees as well. We could have easily taken this opportunity to say, well, in the face of these current uncertainties, we should reduce our employees by ten percent or five percent, which even five percent is like a 1,000 people. And we didn’t do that. We didn’t do that.
[00:16:19]
So overall, we’re managing attrition. We are actually concerned about now being able—now that everything is returned and there is a lot of confidence in our organization, there are many more patients waning to come to MD Anderson. We had the opposite problem of not being able to recruit fast enough. So we simply needed to tighten our belt a little bit, but we didn’t really need to go in to create a heavily state of uncertainty and demoralization by laying off people, more or less at random, as it has happened in the past year. So I think these are really, truly differentiating factors. I think the third component is the ability to use the power of persuasion as opposed to enforcing rules around vaccination. If I could, I would definitely make it mandatory, but I appreciate that there are concerns. I think we’ll see what happens when the products are FDA approved, but we were able to really drive a campaign encouraging all people to be vaccinated without imposing upon them this notion.
[00:17:52]
Nina Nevill
[00:17:57]
Well, we only have a few minutes left, so I’d like to just ask a couple more questions more broadly about your time at MD Anderson. You’ve held a variety of different positions. And for some people, this is a very fun question. And for others, it’s a hard question. But if you can look back at your time really in any of the positions that you’ve held, I’d love for you to tell me a little bit about something that you’re really proud of either a project or an initiative or something that you worked on.
[00:18:30]
Giulio F. Draetta, PhD, MD
[00:18:35]
Well, I am in a very special position because this role did not exist before. And research was very much scattered across the organization without any effort in creating a process for harmonization, for the organization to reflect upon potential areas of investment ,approach to recruitment, aligning our strategy with specific actions. Where do we want to go? What I’m really proud about is that, A, I’ve been able to introduce very significant changes in our processes, for example, having a single point of accountability around recruitment of researchers, whether a physician, scientist, or basic researchers, single entry point, single reviewer panel, and then distribution under the leadership of Dr. Jim Allison, second, the creation of the Allison Institute, which we will announce soon, third, a way of really mapping all of the resources so that we know exactly where are our people, which departments, how much space they occupy, how much money they’re being provided with, and how much money they bring in, and sponsorship from industry or other places.
[00:20:11]
We’ve been able to implement these changes without difficulties. For instance, we are two years past the Smithville announcement, everybody’s in the process of relocating. We haven’t lost a single mouse from the facility since the moving. There are now residents in Houston. The labs are still being set up, but I went yesterday. It’s a beautiful new space. They seem to be happy, so very proud of these things.
[00:21:44]
Nina Nevill
[00:21:47]
Oh, wow, that’s a lot to be proud of. It sounds like your work is very fulfilling and that you have a lot ahead of you in a positive way. So it seems like we are just about out of time, but I wanted to ask if there’s anything that you had questions about or anything that you had sort of hoped that I asked about in this interview?
[00:22:09]
Giulio F. Draetta, PhD, MD
[00:22:09]
No. It’s great. I’m wondering whether we should bring this history project to the Research Town Hall because I’ve never heard of it. And it would be good to talk a little bit about what do we do, what’s the oral history project, and where are you guys going, and what are we learning here. So think about it.
[00:22:43]
Nina Nevill
[00:22:43]
Absolutely. Yeah. And, unfortunately, this internship that they’ve hired me for this summer to conduct these histories—I’ve done six interviews so far. And, unfortunately, tomorrow is my last day. And so whoever carries on the project from here on forward, I think would be really happy to kind of get the message out there that we’re doing this because so far what we’ve collected has been really interesting and really authentic to this past year, kind of getting an understanding of it. So, yeah, we appreciate you being willing to speak with us.
[00:23:20]
Giulio F. Draetta, PhD, MD
[00:23:20]
Sure. I wish you all the best in whatever next step you’re anticipating for your career. And at any time if I can be of help, just let me know. There’s plenty of great opportunities in our organization. All right. Thanks so much.
[00:23:37]
Nina Nevill
[00:23:37]
Well, thank you so much. Have a good rest of your day.
[00:23:39]
Giulio F. Draetta, PhD, MD
[00:23:39]
[I will?]. Bye-bye.
[00:23:40]
Nina Nevill
[00:23:41]
Bye-Bye
[00:23:42]
Publication Date
8-12-2021
Recommended Citation
Draetta, Giulio F. PhD, MD and Nevill, Nina, "Giulio F. Draetta, PhD, MD, Oral History Interview, August 12, 2021" (2021). MD Anderson 2020 Interview Collection. 29.
https://openworks.mdanderson.org/mda2020_interviewsessions/29
Conditions Governing Access
Open
About the Interview
Dr. Giulio F. Draetta, Chief Scientific Officer, provides insight into how MD Anderson Cancer Center responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. He particularly details the beginning stages of this global health crisis at a local level, the evolution of testing strategies at the institution, and the overall effect on the work culture at MD Anderson. While reflecting on what he has learned in navigating the pandemic, Dr. Draetta also provides a broadened definition for innovation, noting that innovation is not merely confined to laboratory research. Moreover, Dr. Draetta mediates on what made MD Anderson unique while navigating this tumultuous period and describes how care was essential, in relation to patients and the institution's workforce. The interview ends with Dr. Draetta reflecting on what he is most proud of accomplishing in his roles while also drawing comparison to previous roles outside of MD Anderson.