Sorry I missed my blog last week, but we were up in Philly last weekend and I just didn’t get my writing hat adjusted in time. Well, it’s summertime, so I guess I am allowed a week off from the blog.
However, that break does not extend to preparations for the CCSG competitive renewal. I believe I have read preliminary drafts of every program, all of the shared resources, and virtually all of the administrative sections. And, I have been working hard to incorporate that information into my overview and description ofthe cancer center’s essential characteristics. I have not been alone — Carolyn Hurley, Mike Atkins and Steve Byers have read every word too, aided by so many people, with special thanks to Ellen McLaughlin and Michael Vander Hoek. We have met with the program leaders, the Shared Resource directors and all of the administrative leads to review their drafts and pepper them with suggestions and edits. We are getting ready to send out these cleaned up first drafts to our External Advisory Committee on August 10, so the members have a chance to review their assigned portions in advance of the EAC meeting on September 11. We are on target, and look forward to getting the EAC’s feedback to help us polish the drafts by the end of the calendar year. This will give us time to weave together the stories we have to tell. There are many of them, they are really very good, and they accurately portray the many dimensions of Lombardi’s excellence.
A special word about Carolyn Hurley; she has done an utterly remarkable job of mobilizing this incredibly complex effort. Not only will the CCSG be in great shape in time for the May submission, but we will be a much better cancer center as a result of her efforts.
While my past two weeks have been partially consumed by CCSG reading, writing and meetings, I have continued to see patients. You will no doubt remember my young patient with metastatic colon cancer from my prior blogs. He resumed chemotherapy two weeks ago with 5-fluorouracil, oxaliplatin and bevacizumab. He is tolerating chemotherapy well, and had a routine restaging CT scan last week. Not surprisingly, the CT scan shows worseningof the liver metastases as he has been off chemotherapy for two months while he prepared for and recovered from his colon surgery. Needless to say, he was quite concerned, and we spent some time on the phone discussing his situation. I do hope that the addition of bevacizumab will increase the sensitivity of his cancer cells to the chemotherapy agents. There is good reason to believe this can happen based upon a large amount of clinical literature. I will let you know if my hopes are rewarded with good results when he has his next CT scan in about two months.
Interestingly, our many CCSG-related meetings reminded me of all the remarkable talent we have on this campus to address the role of anti-angiogenic agents like bevacizumab in cancer therapy. On Thursday, we reviewed the ET program’s draft overview. John Marshall, who has been a prime implementer of bevacizumab-based therapy in colorectal cancer, was part of this discussion. So was Anton Wellstein, an angiogenesis expert witha longstanding collaboration with Chris Wilcox to study the interaction of angiogenesis and blood pressure control. They were joined by Mike Atkins,who has published extensively in this area and is in the process of designing a clinical trial that will examine the role of hypertension as a biomarker of angiogenesis inhibitor efficacy. With such firepower, and my own interest in monoclonal antibodies, it sounds like we have an opportunity to extend this research area. My patient certainly needs all the help he can get.
I hope you’ve stayed cool this weekend. I was happy to attend the wedding of the daughter of old friends, and to letting my eyes uncross and my brain recover a bit from my serious case of CCSG-itis.