G-DOC – From the Desk of Dr. Louis M. Weiner

I hope everybody had a nice Memorial Day holiday. In case you were wondering the CCSG did get mailed out on Friday morning and the NCI did confirm receipt. Thanks again to Ellen, Stephanie, and the rest of the team who did such a wonderful job pulling together this truly massive enterprise.

I hope that everybody who is interested in the design of biomarker rich clinical trials was able to attend Thursday’s 3DT meeting chaired by Mike Pishvaian. It was an opportunity to hear about new clinical trial concepts and enrich their scientific content to increase their impact. Mike has done a great job organizing these meetings, which have resulted in the opening of several new clinical trials. Interestingly, our clinical trial accruals have improved over the past 6 months and I am convinced we can continue to make progress in this important aspect of our cancer center’s mission. I know I am doing my part because I have enrolled a few people in clinical trials over the past several weeks.

I was delighted to note the very nice turnout for the Wednesday seminar given by Sian Jones and Devin Dressman. The talks were both exhilarating (So much information!) and sobering (So much information!). Just imagine the impact of incorporating multiple databases and connecting the information to clinically relevant endpoints. It certainly will be fun and challenging to roll out G-DOC.

Well, I hope I’m having a good time on vacation. I actually posted this before I left so I wouldn’t eat into my two hour email allowance.

Although I think the programs have already announced this, I want to make sure that everyone knows we have three terrific recruits starting in the next month or so.

First, Lucile Adams-Campbell, the Director of the Howard University Cancer Center, is joining us to be the Associate Director for Minority Health and Health Disparities Research. Lucile is an internationally-recognized epidemiologist with particular expertise in nutrition and physical activity, as well as fostering health disparity research and conducting community health interventions and outreach. Lucile will be a vibrant member of the CGE Program, and her years of experience and important leadership role in the DC cancer community will add a special dimension to our leadership team.

Subha Madhavan joins us on October 1st from NCI where she has played a major role in the organization and execution of the caBIG enterprise. Her recruitment allows us to move forward with the design and implementation of the G-DOC concept. So we’re very excited to have her joining us.

On a related note, you may have seen the press release regarding our collaboration with Indivumed for patient sample acquisition, processing, and data entry. These two developments put us in an excellent position to move forward with our plans to create an integrated clinical molecular database for selected cancers.

And last, but certainly not least, Arnie Potosky joins us from the NCI. He is an internationally-recognized health services researcher who will be the Director of Heath Services Research within the Cancer Control Program. In this role, Arnie will lead a national caliber health services research program at Lombardi that builds on the wornderful foundation established by Jeanne Mandelblatt and colleagues. I’m delighted we are able to add someone of his distinction to our faculty and look forward to his active interaction with our clinical providers and with researchers across the spectrum of Lombardi activities.

I am out of town and therefore can’t comment on this week’s faculty seminar. Sorry Rebecca. But maybe there is a brave soul who can post something to the comments.

See you in September! (Does anybody remember that song?)