When I visited University Circle in Cleveland I was expecting some “healthy competition” between Case Western Reserve and Cleveland Clinic. With campuses so close together, it would be easy to imagine competition for resources and funding. Instead, I saw collaboration everywhere I looked. In my many meetings with scientist and oncologists it was not unusual to have faculty from both institutions present.
At Case Western Reserve University, Dr. William Schiemann and his colleagues have established the Breast Cancer Program as part of the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center. Here there are 31 scientists working hard to understand breast cancer pathogenesis and metastasis. Dr. Schiemann, a 2014 METAvivor grant recipient, is focusing on understanding how tumor dormancy is initiated, maintained, and overcome, and how these metastatic “time bombs” can be defused in breast cancer patients. His goal is to translate these findings into new therapies.
At Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute I met with Dr. Candece Gladson, a 2012 METAvivor grant recipient. The Institute has organized functional expertise into “core services” that provide high tech capabiltity to support the research work of Dr. Gladson and her colleagues. I toured several of these cores, which include the digital imaging core, the cell culture core, and the genomics core, among others.
At both institutions researchers are using technology in innovative ways. I held a 3D printed liver, which had been generated using data from a patient’s scan. The model allowed a surgeon to plan a complex liver resection before ever cutting the patient. There is even a machine shop that can make custom surgical equipment, sometimes while the patient is waiting in the operating room!
In spite of all these resources, when I asked about barriers I learned that access to tissue samples is a problem here as well. Dr. Gladson in particular needs paired samples to validate her early findings – that means she needs a biopsy from a primary tumor as well as a biopsy from a brain metastasis from the same patient. This is difficult, since many brain metastases are treated without biopsy.
As I left Cleveland I felt a great sense of hope. Surely with so many intelligent people working on this problem in such a collaborative way we will make some progress against metastatic disease. But, all of this cutting edge research requires funding. At METAvivor we will do our best to continue to fund the excellent research wherever we find it.
