Pathways to Discovery Winter 2022: Advances in Pediatric Cancer Research

Pathways TO DISCOVERY

WINTER 2022

From the Director

Pediatric cancers behave differently than adult cancers and require a special expertise to treat. These cancers are studied intensely through clinical trials and build off of decades of data shared between institutions around the world.

It is amazing to consider that just 50 years ago, only 10% of children diagnosed with cancer survived. Now, more than 85% are treated successfully. The progress made in cancer treatments for children is a testament to the power of clinical trials and the medical community’s dedication to finding new and better treatments.

In this issue, you’ll read about the heroic efforts of our pediatric cancer experts at the University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital to improve outcomes for kids with cancer. Our experienced team of specialists provides the most advanced care available to diagnose and treat children from infancy to adulthood with all major and rare forms of cancer.

We are forever grateful to the families of children who have enrolled on a clinical trial to advance research that may benefit countless children in the future. We will continue our research until every child with cancer is cured and leads a full, healthy life.

You will also read about our part in the nation’s largest study on cancer prevention to date and our ambitious plans to build Chicago’s first freestanding cancer center. As we are still in the early planning process and we want to build what our patients need, we have invited the community to share what they would like to see in this “cancer center of the future.”

Enjoy the issue, Kunle Odunsi, MD, PhD

AbbVie Foundation Director, University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center

Steps Big Littlest Patients

By Jane Kollmer

Comprehensive care for children with cancer

A cancer diagnosis can be devastating for a child and their family, but there is cause for hope. Fifty years ago, the survival rate was less than 10%. However, major advances over the past few decades have led to greatly improved outcomes, with over 85% of children diagnosed with cancer becoming long-term survivors.

Despite a 71% decrease in cancer death rates for children from 1970 through 2019, cancer remains the leading cause of death from disease among this age group. According to the latest statistics, in 2022 an estimated 10,470 new cases of cancer will be diagnosed in the United States among children from birth to 14 years, and about 1,050 children are expected to die from the disease.

The experienced team of pediatric cancer specialists at the University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital provides the most advanced care available to more than 3,000 young people each year. They diagnose and treat children with common and rare forms of cancer. The staff’s high level of expertise and skill allows them to take on the most challenging cases that may be considered too difficult to treat at other pediatric hospitals.

Progress in treatment and prognosis for pediatric cancer is partly due to investment in laboratory science and clinical research. Almost 75% of children with cancer are enrolled on clinical trials, which is far more than in adults with cancer. This gives researchers more opportunities to learn from the study results.

As a member of the Children’s Oncology Group (COG), the national cooperative group studying childhood cancers, UChicago Medicine physicians frequently collaborate with other leading pediatric oncologists from around the world to identify better ways to diagnose and treat childhood cancers. In fact, Comer Children’s offers one of the largest and most comprehensive portfolios of pediatric cancer clinical trials.

“At any one time, there are more than 80 cancer clinical trials available to young patients at Comer Children’s,” said Tara O. Henderson, MD, MPH, Arthur and Marian Edelstein Professor of Pediatrics, Section Chief, Pediatric Hematology, Oncology and Stem Cell Transplantation at Comer Children’s Hospital. “Because of the innovative research conducted here, our patients often have access to new treatments years before they are widely available elsewhere.”

UChicago Medicine is a member of the Pediatric Early Phase-Clinical Trial Network, which serves as a national and international model for new agent development in pediatric oncology. This dedicated consortium provides the necessary infrastructure for the conduct of pediatric early phase clinical trials and pharmacokinetic and biomarker studies.

Ami V. Desai, MD, MSCE, assistant professor of pediatrics, is an expert in conducting early phase (phase 1) clinical trials, studies that investigate and develop novel treatments for childhood cancers. These small-sized studies are critical as they test the safety, side effects, best dose and timing of a new treatment.

Desai has helped greatly to expand UChicago Medicine’s portfolio of phase 1 studies. She uses pharmacology and biomarker data to explore new therapies for solid tumors. Through this research, she is examining how the body reacts to drug treatments in order to reduce toxicity, improve patient response to medication and enhance overall health outcomes.

Larger studies are instrumental in finding out if new treatments are better than existing ones and may lead to a new standard of care. For example, Jennifer McNeer, MD, associate professor of pediatrics and director of the pediatric leukemia program, is co-chair of a COG trial (AALL1732, NCT03959085) for children and young adults with high-risk B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL). This randomized, phase 3 trial is enrolling nearly 5,000 patients to understand if adding an immunotherapy drug called inotuzumab to the standard-of-care chemotherapy regimen maintains or improves outcomes in patients with newly diagnosed disease.

View our pediatric cancer clinical trials at uchicagomedicine.org/find-a-clinical-trial or clinicaltrials.gov.

Ami V. Desai, MD, MSCE

“Given our experience in recent trials that suggests we are at the limits of what we can do with conventional cytotoxic chemotherapy agents to improve outcomes in B-ALL, as well as the promising results with immunotherapies in patients with relapsed/refractory disease, it is exciting to be moving effective immunotherapy agents to frontline therapy,” said McNeer.

Harnessing the Power of Big Data

The lack of data and samples for study have been the most significant barriers to large-scale discovery and advancement in the treatment of pediatric cancers. The field of bioinformatics is addressing this problem with infrastructure that makes it easier for physicians worldwide to share data and work collaboratively.

UChicago Medicine is one of the sites that the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society is partnered with to develop an integrated multi-site, multitherapy master clinical trial with the goal of matching patients to precision treatment based on their unique tumor biology. This new model, called LLS PedAl, aims to create operational and

cost efficiencies in study management, make data from different sources interoperable, facilitate easy identification of appropriate patients for new therapies, and consolidate clinical and scientific data from academic medical centers and cooperative groups across the United States and Europe.

To achieve its goals, LLS PedAL requires a robust data infrastructure that supports a wide variety of research and clinical activities, including harmonization of historical data and data mining to match patients to clinical trials.

In addition to testing numerous targeted therapies, LLS PedAL will consolidate pediatric cancer data from all sites into a single data set known as the Pediatric Cancer Data Commons (PCDC). Pediatric oncologist Sam Volchenboum, MD, PhD, MS, director of the PCDC, is leading the bioinformatics component of LLS PedAL and is developing and deploying the two-part data platform on which the pilot project will run.

“We are so excited to be building the next-generation platform for matching children with leukemia to innovative clinical trials,” Volchenboum said. “In the process, we will be creating the largest pediatric leukemia data set in the world.”

Maya Gray was just 8 years old when a routine blood test uncovered a problem with her white blood cells. She was eventually diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), a quickly progressing and potentially deadly cancer of the blood and bone marrow. What followed was 27 difficult months of chemotherapy, spinal taps and a complication that had her using crutches for a short time. While the treatment plan recommended by her team at University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital wasn’t easy, it cured her cancer. Today, 11 years later, the girl nicknamed “Miracle Maya” remains cancer-free.

Neuroblastoma Research

Neuroblastoma is a type of cancer that forms from immature nerve cells most often found in children younger than 5 years of age. According to the National Cancer Institute, about 800 children are diagnosed with neuroblastoma each year in the United States. It is the most common nonbrain solid tumor that often forms in and near the abdomen and in the chest or neck region along the spine.

About half of kids diagnosed with neuroblastoma are considered to have high-risk neuroblastoma, meaning that their cancer is particularly aggressive and difficult to treat. For many years, high-risk neuroblastoma was considered to be nearly incurable. Because it is so aggressive and can

rapidly prove fatal, developing treatments that can prevent or delay relapse has been a high priority.

Led by Susan Cohn, MD, professor of pediatrics and an international authority on this childhood cancer, researchers at UChicago Medicine are conducting clinical trials for the disease, including phase 1 trials for aggressive, relapsed neuroblastoma. Desperately needed are new biomarkers to distinguish children who are likely to respond to standard treatments for neuroblastoma from those who may benefit from alternative approaches.

Mark Applebaum, MD, assistant professor of pediatrics, and his team are studying a new method to find cancer DNA in blood samples, known as “liquid biopsies.” He is developing a robust test using routine blood samples to follow the disease and predict which patients will respond to standard treatment and which patients are resistant to standard therapy and may benefit from changes in treatment.

Applebaum hopes to develop biomarkers to improve risk stratification at diagnosis, biomarkers of minimal residual disease for early therapy intervention, and the identification of gene networks which drive high-risk neuroblastoma. This work will have a transformative impact by identifying new ways to diagnose and monitor neuroblastoma using liquid biopsies, potentially enabling early introduction of novel therapeutics. This project will lead to novel blood tests that will provide vital information for optimizing treatments for each patient to improve outcomes. Such a personalized approach is the holy grail for allowing more children to receive just the right amount of treatment with fewer side effects.

“We envision that our test will allow us to move away from a one-size-fits-all approach to treating neuroblastoma,” said Applebaum. “In the shortand medium-term, we expect to be able to rapidly identify children who are not responding to conventional chemotherapy and may benefit from

Image: Mark Applebaum, MD

novel approaches.”

“We expect to be able to rapidly identify children who are not responding to conventional chemotherapy and may benefit from novel approaches.”

University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital

Expanding footprint in the community

In 2018, three Chicago-area health systems came together to form a network of pediatric clinical services called the Chicagoland Children’s Health Alliance (CCHA). Through this collaboration between the University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital, Advocate Children’s Hospital and pediatrics at NorthShore University HealthSystem, more children have gained increased access to care across the areas of pediatric cancer and blood diseases; cardiology and cardiac surgery; gastroenterology; neurology and neurosurgery; and general pediatric surgery.

Not only does this expand current expertise to more children, but also the organizations are working together to strengthen clinical capabilities and promote new programs and innovative therapies. In addition, the institutions are enhancing the coordination of academic research to improve patient outcomes, as well as to train the next generation of physicians.

“By partnering on these important pediatric services, we are building a stronger and more diverse network of care,” said John M. Cunningham, MD, George M. Eisenberg Professor and chair of the Department of Pediatrics and physician-in-chief of Comer Children’s Hospital. “We are tapping physicians with strong national reputations in their fields to help lead our collective efforts.”

Specifically, the integrated and comprehensive system of pediatric experts from primary care to highly specialized care, as well as expertise in maternal and fetal medicine will now be accessible to families living near a geographic region that spans Chicago and its suburbs and Northwest Indiana. Clinical sites include Hyde Park, Chicago, Evanston, Wilmette, Park Ridge, Oak Lawn, Tinley Park, Naperville and Merrillville, Indiana.

“The CCHA’s goal is to support patients’ and families’ needs for the highest level of pediatric care with easier access to pediatricians and pediatric specialists at a lower cost,” explained Tara O. Henderson, MD, who is the chief of the CCHA’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Service Line.

Since its formation in 2018, the CCHA has been working together to share and adopt the best practices for patients; provide seamless referrals and ongoing coordinated care for children; and develop and apply new innovations and technologies to improve the patient experience.

Cancer Survivorship

Survivors of childhood cancer need specialized care as they age. The toxic treatments they received may have a negative impact on their health later in life. For children who receive cancer treatments, any developing organ can be impacted by chemotherapy and radiation. That puts them at risk for developing heart failure and lung disease, along with secondary cancers. Because of this, their health needs to be monitored to proactively prevent and treat any long-term issues associated with cancer therapy.

Tara O. Henderson, MD, directs the Childhood Cancer Survivor Center at the University of Chicago Medicine Comer Children’s Hospital one of the preeminent academic childhood survivorship programs in the nation. There, she works with childhood cancer survivors to understand their risk of second cancers and the longterm health consequences of cancer therapy.

“We see survivors of both childhood and young adult cancers, providing them with ongoing surveillance and interventions to ensure any new problems are caught early,” said Henderson. “Importantly, that includes having open communication with cancer survivors’ primary care doctors, who are often unaware of the ongoing risks in this population.”

In addition, Henderson’s research program is dedicated to understanding the types and frequencies of second cancers that arise in these survivors and how best to care for them in the long term. She is the principal investigator of two National Cancer Institute-funded intervention trials to improve screening and early detection of secondary cancers in adult survivors of childhood cancer.

Female childhood cancer survivors even if they did not receive radiation treatments to their chest are six times more likely than the general population to be diagnosed with breast cancer. For those who did receive chest radiation, that chance increases exponentially and is on par with those who have the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genetic mutations. The ultimate goal is to minimize the health effects and identify diseases like breast cancer early. Henderson and colleagues recently published in JAMA Oncology a study of 11,550 female survivors of childhood cancer finding that ongoing efforts to both improve survival outcomes and minimize longterm toxic effects of treatment were associated with a decreased risk of breast cancer over time. Since outcomes in this population are similar to breast cancer outcomes in the general population, diagnosing breast cancer when it is stage 1 often leads to a greater than 90% cure rate.

“We want survivors to stay engaged throughout their lifetimes and know that once they are cured, they still need to know their risks,” said Henderson. “That doesn’t necessarily mean they will have issues, but we want them to be empowered with information and not get lost in follow-up.”

“We see survivors of both childhood and young adult cancers, providing them with ongoing surveillance and interventions to ensure any new problems are caught early.”

CANCER CARE

REIMAGINED

BY LORNA WONG

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO MEDICINE PLANS TO BUILD A $633 MILLION, 500,000-SQUARE-FOOT FACILITY DEDICATED TO CANCER CARE ON ITS MEDICAL CAMPUS ON THE CITY’S SOUTH SIDE, REPRESENTING ONE OF THE LARGEST INVESTMENTS MADE BY THE ACADEMIC HEALTH SYSTEM FOR PATIENTS AND THE COMMUNITY.

The plan for Chicago’s first freestanding clinical cancer center includes the addition of 128 beds. These beds will be dedicated to patients with cancer, allowing UChicago Medicine to open other beds for patients with complex or acute care needs in areas such as organ transplants, digestive diseases, cardiology, orthopedics and trauma care. This, in turn, will help address some of the capacity constraints for the medical center, whose beds are full most days of the year.

As one of only two National Cancer Institutedesignated Comprehensive Cancer Centers in Illinois and the only academic medical center on the South Side, UChicago Medicine is uniquely positioned to reimagine cancer care for the community and the City of Chicago. The “Comprehensive” distinction is the gold standard for cancer programs bestowed by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and recognizes the innovative research, leading-edge treatments and extensive community outreach and education initiatives conducted at or by the organization.

ADDRESSING HEALTH INEQUITIES

The South Side has experienced shrinking healthcare resources for many years. Now, about 56% of patients on the South Side leave the area to get healthcare. For cancer needs alone, 67% of residents who are seeking inpatient care leave the South Side. Research has found that patients living farther from healthcare facilities have worse health outcomes, longer lengths of hospital stay, nonattendance at follow-up visits, higher rates of chronic disease-related deaths, lower five-year cancer survival rates and increased overall disease burden.

Residents of the South Side also carry a high cancer burden. The problem is expected to grow worse: The CDC predicts the nation’s cancer rates will increase by 49% from 2015 to 2050.

“Cancer death rates on the South Side are almost twice the national average, and cancer is the second-leading cause of death for area residents,” said Kunle Odunsi, MD, PhD, Director of the University of Chicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center. “This is one of the key reasons we are building this cancer center. Social determinants of health are not only linked to adverse environmental exposures but also to a lack of resources, including access to disease prevention, early detection and high-quality cancer care.”

If approved, the new cancer center will add to an emerging ecosystem of care on the South Side, where community hospitals provide access to care to vulnerable and lower-income patients and where academic health systems like UChicago Medicine play a critical role in treating the sickest patients and those who require complex care.

Indeed, a collaborative of 13 South Side care providers, including UChicago Medicine, are working to establish the South Side Healthy Community Organization, which is being scoped to serve over 400,000 residents with more seamless and more accessible healthcare. The model will add 90 primary care providers and obstetric hires, access to nearly 50 priority specialists, 250 community healthcare workers/coordinators and a connected care technology platform.

THE PERCENTAGE THE CDC PREDICTS THE NATION’S CANCER RATES WILL INCREASE BY FROM 2015 TO 2050

UNDERSTANDING THE PATIENT

A significant portion of the planning and design will focus on the patient and family experience, including making sure all services throughout the care journey are in the same location and creating a healing and stress-reducing environment.

“A diagnosis of cancer is a life-altering event for the patient and their loved ones,” said Tom Jackiewicz, President of the University of Chicago Medical Center. “We want to design a place that brings back the human side of healthcare, one that really thinks of people as individuals and not as a breast cancer patient or a colorectal cancer patient. They will be seen as an individual and as families coming to us for the best cancer care available.”

The cancer center, which includes inpatient and outpatient care, will have a focus on prevention and early detection of cancer and be a hub for research into the more aggressive forms of cancer that affect residents on the South Side and many other communities of color across the country.

“The South Side is the epicenter of healthcare inequality in the city, and the healthcare community needs to begin listening to the experiences of South Side patients and investing in better care options for patients of color if we are going to improve health outcomes for Chicago’s underprivileged communities,” said Candace Henley, a cancer survivor, founder of The Blue Hat Foundation and member of the UChicago Medicine Community Advisory Council. “Everyone deserves the opportunity to fight their best fight against cancer.”

Pending regulatory approval, construction of the new facility will begin in 2023, and it will open to patients in 2026. For now, community members will be asked to provide input on patient experience, amenities such as food and retail options, references for prevention services, and other features of the new cancer center.

Learn more: uchicagomedicine.org/cancer/ new-cancer-center

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO MEDICINE COMPREHENSIVE CANCER CENTER RECENTLY RANKED AS ONE OF THE TOP 15 CANCER CENTERS IN THE NATION, ACCORDING TO U.S.NEWS&WORLDREPORT

“CANCER DEATH RATES ON THE SOUTH SIDE ARE ALMOST TWICE THE NATIONAL AVERAGE, AND CANCER IS THE SECOND-LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH FOR AREA RESIDENTS. THIS IS ONE OF THE KEY REASONS WE ARE BUILDING THIS CANCER CENTER.”

KUNLE ODUNSI, MD, PHD

BEDS WILL BE DEDICATED TO PATIENTS WITH CANCER IN CHICAGO’S FIRST FREESTANDING CLINICAL CANCER CENTER

connect today, prevent cancer tomorrow

By Jane Kollmer

The University of Chicago Medicine hopes to recruit 50,000 people to participate in a new national study designed to explore the causes of cancer and learn more about how to prevent it.

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.

early diagnosis

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.

“Connect is an important and timely initiative to make impactful cancer precision health discoveries which will improve prevention,

and outcomes of cancer in the

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

“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.”

— Habibul Ahsan, MD, MMedSc

Meet the Expert: Tara Henderson, MD, MPH

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.

How did you get interested in studying cancer?

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

Tara

(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.

What is the most rewarding part of your job?

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.

Who inspires you?

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

What do you love about working at the University of Chicago?

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

What is one thing on your bucket list?

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.

Research Highlights

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

‘Bridge therapy’ may benefit some children with high-risk neuroblastoma

Research Highlights

Researchers find new mechanism to turn on cancer-killing T cells

Resilience and mental health challenges for ovarian cancer survivors during the pandemic

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)

Ovarian cancer survivors face many challenges and need support.

AMITA Health and UChicago Medicine launch cancer collaboration at AMITA Health Saint Joseph Hospital Chicago

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.”

UCHICAGO MEDICINE CLINICAL TRIAL LEADS TO GROUNDBREAKING NEW UVEAL MELANOMA DRUG

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.

Theranostics: A promising treatment option for patients

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.

Xavier Keutgen, MD

Faculty Awards and Honors

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.