CONNECT TODAY, PREVENT CANCER TOMORROW

By Jane Kollmer

The academic health system has partnered with the National Cancer Institute (NCI), a part of the National Institutes of Health, for the Connect for Cancer Prevention Study (Connect). Connect will track participants over time with the goal of identifying factors that could impact a person’s cancer risk and other health outcomes. The team says the findings have the potential to influence public health and cancer prevention guidance for years to come. “Connect is an important and timely initiative to make impactful cancer precision health discoveries which will improve prevention, early diagnosis and outcomes of cancer in the U.S.,” said Habibul Ahsan, MD, MMedSc, Dean of Population and Precision Health in the University of Chicago’s Biological Sciences Division. Ahsan is the principal investigator of the study. The study will be housed within UChicago’s Institute for Population and Precision Health (IPPH), which Ahsan leads.

UChicago Medicine is one of nine healthcare sites across the country participating in this research effort. Collectively, the healthcare systems hope to enroll 200,000 participants over the next five years. The nationwide effort aims to recruit people from all racial, ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds to ensure the study’s findings benefit the broadest number of people. “Connect will explore novel and emerging exposures that may affect cancer risk,” said Montserrat García-Closas, MD, DrPH, Deputy Director of NCI’s Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics and the principal investigator. “This study will change the future of cancer prevention.” Eligible participants are between the ages of 40 and 65, have no history of invasive cancer and are UChicago Medicine members or patients. People who join will be asked to complete online health surveys several times a year and to donate samples of blood, urine and saliva every two to three years. Safeguards for privacy and confidentiality will be in place to protect participants’ data and biological samples. “We are confident this research will offer insight into preventing the enormous burden of cancer and give us important insights into the causes of this disease,” said Briseis Aschebrook-Kilfoy, PhD, MPH, Scientific Director for the IPPH and lead co-investigator of Connect. “This will yield important knowledge that will help us improve tailored treatment and outcomes for cancer patients in the future and hopefully help prevent disease as well.”

UChicago Medicine, an academic health system based on Chicago’s South Side, was selected for the project in part because of its long history of building large and diverse population health cohorts in Chicago and globally. “It is critical that the tailored prevention and treatment discovery is inclusive and relevant for our patient population and the communities we serve,” said Aschebrook-Kilfoy. “The IPPH has led the nation in inclusion of diverse study participants in other national studies, and we are hopeful that we bring significant diversity to Connect.” Cancer is the second-leading cause of death in the U.S., and cases are expected to rise in the next decade as the country’s population ages and lifestyles change. Communities in Chicago and particularly those on the South Side suffer from multiple health disparities, including cancer rates. Bringing Connect to Hyde Park and surrounding communities enables underrepresented groups to participate in biomedical research.

To learn more about Connect, visit cancer.gov/connectstudy or email the UChicago Connect team at Connect@bsd.uchicago.edu. Interested individuals can also sign up for the IPPH Research Registry at ipph.uchicago.edu/registry.

Tara Henderson, MD, MPH, is the section chief of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology and Stem Cell Transplantation at the University of Chicago Medicine. The renowned cancer specialist is also the service line chief of Pediatric Cancer and Blood Diseases at the Chicagoland Children’s Health Alliance.

As a high school junior, I had the opportunity to spend a summer in a cancer research lab through a program in New Jersey called Partners in Science. This experience hooked me. I was open-minded to different oncology disciplines throughout my time in medical school at Pritzker, but ultimately an experience as a third-year medical student inspired me to be a pediatric oncologist. During my inpatient pediatrics rotation, I cared for a child

(and her family) with acute promyelocytic leukemia and Down syndrome undergoing a stem cell transplant. I knew then what I wanted to devote my life to doing.

I love building teams across the Chicagoland Children’s Healthcare Alliance, the University of Chicago and the world to answer questions that can hopefully improve the lives of cancer patients and survivors.

My patients, their families and the other pediatric oncology team members who are focused on curing kids and adolescents with cancer.

I love that this is a place that celebrates ideas and working across disciplines and divisions to tackle difficult problems.

I want to pick up a paintbrush again! I love painting and drawing. I even was able to fit in drawing classes at the Art Institute as a medical student. I had to put it aside for medical training and growing a family, but I really want to be spending more time working in the arts.

Neuroblastoma is a cancer of immature nerve cells that mainly affects infants and young children. Treatment for these children often includes chemotherapy, surgery, radiation therapy, stem cell transplant, retinoid therapy and immunotherapy. Despite the remission to the initial induction therapy (various chemotherapy drugs plus surgery) followed by consolidation therapy (high dose of chemotherapy plus stem cell transplant), approximately half of the highrisk children experience recurrence or relapse. In these cases, a bridge therapy which includes a combination of immunotherapy drugs with other therapies could offer some benefit. Ami V. Desai, MD, MSCE, assistant professor of pediatrics, and her colleagues have examined the benefits of the bridge therapy strategy in 201 neuroblastoma patients. They found that patients who received bridge therapy prior to consolidation therapy with stable tumors after induction therapy had significantly improved event-free survival compared to the patients who went directly to consolidation therapy, suggesting that bridge therapy prior to consolidation therapy benefits high-risk neuroblastoma patients.

Desai et al., Cancer 128(15):2967-2977, 2022.

Fluorescence microscopic view of human neuroblastoma cells

Ovarian cancer survivors face many challenges and need support.

Ovarian cancer patients often develop resilience to cope with the challenges associated with the disease; however, the COVID-19 pandemic has created new challenges for these patients. Nita K. Lee, MD, MPH, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology, and her team conducted a telephone-based survey to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health, quality of life and cancer care in ovarian cancer survivors. They interviewed 61 advanced-stage ovarian cancer survivors and found a high prevalence of resilience and low rates of anxiety and depression during the early days of the pandemic. In the later stages of the pandemic, however, the survivors experienced increased loneliness, which could erode resilience and contribute to the development of depression. The authors believe this study underscores the importance of treating the patient holistically and not just their disease to ensure their quality of life, including their mental health, is not negatively affected. This study suggests that providing purposeful support through physiologic, physical and social domains is required to maintain and develop resilience and to improve the quality of life in cancer survivors.

Javellana et al., JCO Oncology Practice 18:6, e948-e957, 2022.

Cancer immunotherapies have shown promising outcomes in a wide variety of cancers. Unlike traditional therapies like radiation and chemotherapy, immunotherapies work through the activation of T cells to identify and destroy cancer cells. However, some cancer types or cancer patients are resistant to immunotherapies. The complexity of the immune system and the lack of understanding of how the immune system elicits an anti-cancer response has slowed the progress toward making immunotherapies universally efficacious. Justin Kline, MD, associate professor of medicine, and his team conducted a study to determine the role of dendritic cells (the cells that alert the T cells to antigens) in the cancer immune response. The team found that, unlike dendritic cell cross-presentation, in which dendritic cells eat up tumor cells and present antigens to T cells, dendritic cells “dress themselves” with tumor molecules to spur T cells into action. Identifying this pathway might have implications in better designing the next generation of vaccines or which tumor antigens might be best to target.

MacNabb et al., Immunity 55(6):982-997.e8, 2022.

Artist’s model of dendritic cell morphology, based on three-dimensional focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy data (National Cancer Institute/Donald Bliss (NLM), Sriram Subramaniam)

AMITA Health and the University of Chicago Medicine have joined forces in a collaboration to jointly bring the South Side academic health system’s specialized cancer expertise, access to advanced therapies and innovative clinical trials, and greater cancer care options to Chicago’s North Side. The new partnership, based at AMITA Saint Joseph Hospital Chicago (SJHC) in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, includes radiation and medical oncology as well as surgical oncology and research services. Patients can now be seen by UChicago Medicine oncology physicians at the SJHC campus. This collaboration reinforces both organizations’ commitment to quality and innovation and a shared vision of increasing access for patients by providing broadened access to academic cancer care. “AMITA Health continually seeks to improve access to the best possible care, and we are excited to begin this very important partnership with the University of Chicago Medicine,” said Elyse Forkosh-Cutler, Chief Strategy Officer, AMITA Health. “By bringing University of Chicago Medicine cancer services to Chicago’s North Side, in partnership with AMITA Health, we will enhance patient access to academic-level oncology services for the patients and communities we are privileged to serve.”

A groundbreaking new cancer drug, tebentafusp-tebn, was approved by the FDA in January 2022. However, it’s been helping University of Chicago Medicine cancer patient Kathy Huyser for several years. Huyser was part of a clinical trial at UChicago Medicine of tebentafusp-tebn as a treatment for her uveal melanoma, a rare type of cancer that forms in the back of the eye. It can be hard to detect, giving the cancer an opportunity to spread throughout the body. Participants, including Huyser, received weekly intravenous (IV) infusions and blood tests, and CT scans every 12 weeks. While the drug did not help every patient in the trial, it proved to be a viable tool in fighting uveal melanoma. In Huyser’s case, it shrank her tumors and has kept her cancer under control for four years. It’s a significant advance because there were no approved drugs to treat this cancer until now. Because UChicago Medicine was one of just a handful of hospitals in the United States to participate in this clinical trial, it is now one of the first centers nationwide offering tebentafusptebn to uveal melanoma patients.

Xavier Keutgen, MD

Cancer theranostics — a blend of “therapy” and “diagnostics” — is a one-two punch against cancer that involves finding cancer cells anywhere in the body and delivering targeted radiation to kill those cells. It involves the use of radiotracers, compounds made of radiation and chemicals that selectively bind to a specific target in the body. Positron emission tomography (PET) is used to locate the cancer, followed by an infusion of medicine to destroy it. Because of its precision, theranostics reduces the risk of harming nearby healthy tissues. Recent medical advances have increased the number of FDA-approved theranostic procedures in the United States. They are typically used for metastatic disease that fails to respond well to established systemic therapies such as conventional chemotherapy. These include neuroendocrine cancer, prostate cancer, pediatric neuroblastoma and rare tumors related to the adrenal gland. University of Chicago Medicine physicians and scientists are leaders in both the development and administration of theranostic procedures and are actively conducting research to expand this promising treatment option for other types of cancer. With the only hospital in Illinois to have a medical cyclotron — a powerful machine capable of manufacturing new kinds of radiotracers — and in collaboration with experts at the renowned Argonne National Laboratory, UChicago Medicine researchers are working to increase the number of cancer cell targets at which novel theranostics can take aim.

Everett E. Vokes, MD, John E. Ultmann Professor of Medicine, chair of the Department of Medicine and physician-in-chief at the University of Chicago Medicine and Biological Sciences, served as the president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) for the 2021-2022 term. M. Eileen Dolan, PhD, professor of medicine, is now the Deputy Director for the Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dolan has spent the past eight years working as its Associate Director for Cancer Research Training and Education Coordination. Wendy Stock, MD, and Peter H. O’Donnell, MD, have been chosen to lead committees of the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology, a clinical trials network sponsored by the National Cancer Institute that promotes collaboration among approximately 10,000 cancer specialists across the U.S. and Canada.

Stock was selected to co-chair the Leukemia Committee and will help oversee the development of new clinical approaches to leukemia.

O’Donnell was selected to lead the Pharmacogenomics and Population Pharmacology Committee for the Alliance.

Alex T. Pearson, MD, PhD, is the new Director of the Head and Neck Cancer Program as well as the inaugural Director of Data Sciences for the Section of Hematology/Oncology. Jasmin A. Tiro, PhD, MPH, has joined the University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center as the new Associate Director of Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences. Hans Schreiber, MD, PhD, professor of pathology, received the inaugural David Jonas Memorial Award in recognition for his dedication and significant contributions to the field of cellular immunotherapy. Michael Bishop, MD, professor of medicine and director of the David and Etta Jonas Center for Cellular Therapy at UChicago Medicine, (left) presented the award.

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