Nov. 2, 2016:

Investigator Spotlight

Natalie Callander, MD, is a hematologist at the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center who focuses on the treatment of patients with multiple myeloma, the second most common form of blood cancer. She serves as co-chair of the Big Ten CRC’s Multiple Myeloma Clinical Trial group, along with Dr. Craig Cole of the University of Michigan. “Our mission at the Big Ten CRC is to foster collaboration between researchers and industry partners in order to develop novel therapies, particularly for patients with relapsed myeloma,” Callander said. “We also hope to provide young investigators a venue to explore new treatment paradigms.”

Callander is the Medical Director of the Myeloma Clinical Program at UW, where she has worked to increase the number of high quality myeloma clinical trials. Under her leadership, UW has become the one of the top accuers for myeloma clinical trials in ECOG (the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group). She also assembled a myeloma translational research group on campus, including Shigeki Miyamoto, PhD, Peiman Hematti, MD, Fotis Asimakopoulos, MB, PhD, and Alan Rapraeger, PhD, which has been working together now for nearly a decade. One of her projects involves collecting bone marrow samples from myeloma, patients, so that their tumor cells can be studies in a variety of ways. One investigation involves the study of how drug resistance develops and to identify new biological markers that could serve as therapeutic targets. Their group is also researching a personalized approach to treatment, where they test drug therapies on both cancerous and healthy cells culled from these donated bone marrow samples to accurately recapitulate the marrow microenvironment. “We hope that this approach will lead to a real time method of helping to decide the best treatments for relapsed patients, and ultimately spare them from ineffective and potentially toxic drugs,” Callander said. Read More