July 10, 2019:

Nasser Hanna, MD, a thoracic oncology specialist at the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center, has been appointed to the Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium (Big Ten CRC) Steering Committee.

As the representative for Indiana University, Dr. Hanna will work with the Steering Committee to shape research priorities for the Big Ten CRC.

“I’m honored and excited and looking forward to getting started,” Dr. Hanna said. “I’ve enjoyed my work with the Big Ten CRC and our member institutions. I’d like to continue to build on the efforts to reduce timelines for opening studies, increase accruals, increase engagement, and enhance opportunities for mentorship of junior faculty.”

Dr. Hanna previously served as chairman of Hoosier Cancer Research Network (HCRN), the administrative headquarters of the Big Ten CRC. He has been a member of the Big Ten CRC since it was founded in 2013. He is a member of the HCRN and Big Ten CRC Thoracic Clinical Trial Working Groups. Read More

July 1, 2019:

Investigator Spotlight:

Imagine having surgery to remove a tumor, and by the time you’ve recovered from the operation, your oncologist has determined a specific drug regimen that is targeted to treat your cancer.

“If you get diagnosed with a bacterial infection, we take a culture, grow the bacteria in the lab, and treat the cultures with antibiotics,” said Dustin Deming, MD, a gastrointestinal oncologist and researcher with the UW Carbone Cancer Center. “This helps us learn what antibiotic will best treat an infection. Why can’t we do the same thing for cancer?”

Shifting “trial and error” treatment approaches from patients to cell cultures could spare patients time and unnecessary side effects while providing a personalized form of treatment.

The challenge to this approach has traditionally been the difficulty of growing cancer cells in the lab, but research in Deming’s lab, which focuses on gastrointestinal cancers, is overcoming this limitation. Read More

June 24, 2019:

In this month’s Across the Consortium, the Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium (Big Ten CRC) focuses on immunotherapy treatments which are quickly growing to be successful treatments for cancer. There is also growing research on specific cancers and how they affect different populations based on several demographics.

Read More

June 1, 2019:

Investigator Spotlight:

Robert Kratzke, MD, University of Minnesota

Research interests:

I am a medical oncologist with a particular interest in lung cancer and mesothelioma. In my laboratory we are currently looking at the use of viruses for cancer therapy. In particular, the vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) interests us as it preferentially infects cancer cells without causing disease in humans. We have shown that injecting the virus at one tumor will rapidly lead to infection in other tumor sites throughout the body. Also, the infection of the cancer cells not only kills malignant cells, it elicits an immune response that helps attack surrounding cancer cells without harming normal cells. Finally, this enhanced immune response makes the infected cancer cells more vulnerable to treatment with the modern immunotherapies such as pembroluzimab or nivolumab. In collaboration with Dr. Manish Patel we are currently running clinical studies at the UMMC using VSV. Read More

May 30, 2019:

The Cancer Center at Illinois (CCIL) has joined the Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium (Big Ten CRC).

Located at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the CCIL develops new insights, tools, and technologies to fight cancer and moves those advances into clinical practice. The CCIL unites historic campus strengths in basic science and engineering to develop new ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat cancer, enabling people to live cancer-free lives. Read More

May 30, 2019:

Two Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium studies, BTCRC-LUN16-081 and BTCRC-ESO14-012, will be presented during the 2019 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting, May 31 – June 4, in Chicago.

BTCRC-LUN16-081, a phase II study of consolidation immunotherapy with nivolumab and ipilimumab or nivolumab alone following concurrent chemoradiotherapy for unresectable stage IIIA/IIIB non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), will be featured during a poster session on Sunday, June 2. The study is led by Greg Durm, MD, of the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center. Read More

May 29, 2019:

The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James) has joined the Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium (Big Ten CRC).

Through membership in the consortium, cancer researchers from The Ohio State University may participate in the Big Ten CRC’s Clinical Trial Working Groups, submit letters of intent (LOIs) to the working groups for consideration as Big Ten studies, and collaborate with researchers from other Big Ten cancer centers on clinical trials.

Based in Columbus, Ohio, the OSUCCC – James is the only cancer program in the United States that features a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated comprehensive cancer center aligned with a nationally ranked academic medical center and a freestanding cancer hospital on the campus of one of the nation’s largest public universities. Read More

May 28, 2019:

In this month’s Across the Consortium, the Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium (Big Ten CRC) highlights new treatments, early cancer detection methods, and research that is revealing more about the science of cancer and how it spreads. We also welcome two new members to the Big Ten CRC: The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute, and the Cancer Center at Illinois (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). We look forward to their contributions to the Big Ten CRC!

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May 7, 2019:

The University of Michigan is leading a Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium study that will test the immunotherapy drug nivolumab combined with the anti-CSF-1R monoclonal antibody cabiralizumab in patients with relapsed or refractory peripheral T cell lymphoma (PTCL). The study is now open for accrual at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center.

The study, BTCRC-HEM16-085, “Phase II study of nivolumab and the antagonistic CSF-1R monoclonal antibody cabiralizumab (BMS-986227) in patients with relapsed/refractory peripheral T cell lymphoma,” will help researchers determine the number of patients whose tumors shrank after receiving this therapy, and how long this response lasts before the tumors start to grow again. Researchers also hope to learn more about the safety of this combination.

PTCL is a type of non-Hodgkin lymphoma that develops from T-cells, a type of white blood cell that plays a central role in the body’s immune response. More than 74,000 new cases of non-Hodgkin lymphoma were estimated for 2018, 10 to 15 percent of which are PTCL. Because of the heterogeneity of these lymphomas and lack of understanding regarding their pathogenesis, classifying PTCL and developing new therapeutic strategies is slow and challenging.

“While there are a number of novel agents that are FDA approved, the response rates with those agents are low, on the order of about one third, so one in three patients may anticipate a response with those agents,” said Ryan A. Wilcox, MD, PhD, sponsor-investigator of the study and a medical oncologist at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center. Read More

May 3, 2019:

The Big Ten Cancer Research Consortium will host meetings for the Big Ten CRC Foundation, Cancer Center Directors, Steering Committee, and Clinical Trial Working Groups during ASCO 2019. Read More