A UNM professor visited the White House to brief Vice President Joe Biden's staff on new developments in cancer research.
Cheryl Willman, a distinguished professor of pathology and internal medicine at the UNM School of Medicine, was part of a five member delegation that visited Washington D.C. about the progress of The Total Cancer Care/Oncology Research Information Exchange Network consortium that spoke about advancements in the field of precision medicine, the importance of speeding up development of more effective personalized cancer treatments and the need for sharing scientific data.
In his final State of the Union address last month, President Barack Obama announced his challenge to “make America the country that cures cancer once and for all” and nominated Biden as the leader of that initiative.
The vice president is working with the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute to increase research funding and accelerate cancer discoveries, according to a UNM press release.
Willman said the ORIEN consortium caught Biden's attention because of his interest in cancer research.
“Everyone knows, with the death of his son from a brain tumor, Biden has become extremely interested in cancer research and promoting collaboration and communication,” she said.
She said the researchers had the opportunity to speak to Biden's staff about their project and about how it met many of the criteria he sees as essential for America, in terms of detailed analysis of cancer patients, treatment, sharing data across the consortium and making sure that smaller populations have access to drugs.
The UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center joined the consortium about a year ago, she said. The main idea behind joining this consortium was to strengthen cancer research collaboration, including data sharing among countries top cancer centers.
“We made a decision to join this really exciting consortium in cancer precision medicine. The idea is that you have something that Vice President Joe Biden noticed, that there are many great cancer centers around the U.S., but they don’t necessarily collaborate, as a fact, with each other as they might,” Willman said.
"Due to the lack of data sharing and collaboration among different cancer centers, many cancer patients, if they don’t get to one of these leading centers, they don’t necessarily get state of the art cancer treatment," she said.
Biden has been focused on overcoming barriers of access to care and differential care among Americans of all races and beliefs, Willman said.
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The ORIEN consortium consists of 12 National Cancer Institute Comprehensive Cancer Centers.
“We are really thrilled to join the consortium. All of our patients will be consented to the same protocol called total cancer care. Under the program, people diagnosed with cancer consent to be followed through the life time of their disease course, and each of these patients will be undergoing very detailed sequencing of their cancer cells and genomes, and that data is stored,” she said.
It will allow scientists to investigate the nature of cancer that different patients have, Willman said. One of the challenges in New Mexico is that the state has a population of about two million, with only about 10,000 cancer cases a year.
“It’s very difficult for New Mexico to compete with other larger states to get access to new exciting drugs and treatments. Through this consortium, by collaborating with these other cancer centers, if we partner, between us we have 150,000 newly diagnosed cancer patients each year. And if you do this detailed genomic characterization of their cancer cell, pharmaceuticals companies are really happy to provide drugs to the consortium,” she said.
The UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center is one of the nation’s top cancer centers, Willman said, and one of the top 45 national cancer institutes or Federal Comprehensive Cancer Centers.
“What that means is that we have a very integrated mission to deliver state of the art cancer care and conduct research that uncovers the causes of cancer and its treatment that particularly affect our population,” she said.
Being a part of the consortium will help UNM Comprehensive Care Center achieve some of its goals, Willman said.
Haseeb Musawir, a health administration graduate student, said the goals of ORIEN are consistent with President Obama’s challenge to eradicate cancer from the U.S. once and for all.
“UNM CCC’s participation in the consortium will also be beneficial for cancer patients and survivors in New Mexico,” he said.
He said the consortium should extend its scope and invite smaller cancer centers to also participate in the collaboration.
Sayyed Shah is the assistant news editor at the Daily Lobo. He can be contacted at assistant-news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @mianfawadshah.
