Focus on Cancer

Host: Bruce Bloom, DDS, JD

Guest: Charles Mullighan, MBBS, MSc, MD

How does understanding the genetics of rare disease help us understand other pressing pediatric problems? Dr. Charles Mullighan is assistant member of the faculty, pathology department, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. He joins Dr. Bruce Bloom to discuss the genetics of acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Guest: Seth Corey, MD, MPH

Host: Bruce Bloom, DDS, JD

Physician scientists keep one foot in clinical care and the other in the lab, hoping to bridge that gap to help patients. Are breakthroughs on the horizon? Dr. Seth Corey, the Sharon Murphy and Steven Rosen Professor of Cancer Biology and Chemotherapy at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and director of oncology research at Children's Memorial Hospital and the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center, joins host Dr. Bruce Bloom to discuss his research on repurposing safe pharmaceutical and botanical medicines for relapsed pediatric cancers.

Guest: F. Anthony Greco, MD

Host: Larry Kaskel, MD

Cancer is so often an agonizing diagnosis, one that can be that much more difficult for a patient to accept when the origin of the cancer cannot be traced. Novel genetic tests are just one of a few new options that may help us in situations where imaging, therapy, and other genetic markers have not been effective. Dr. F. Anthony Greco, director of the Sarah Cannon Cancer Center in Nashville, tells us that we appear to be making progress toward new ways to diagnose cancers of unknown primary origin. Dr. Larry Kaskel hosts.

Guest: Leif Ellisen, MD, PhD

Host: Lee Freedman, MD

A new program at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston includes extracting the DNA from its cancer patients’ tumors to determine which abnormalities occur in the tumor cells, specific to the type of tumor. From these results, physicians hope to create better, targeted cancer therapies. Host Dr. Lee Freedman asks Dr. Leif Ellisen, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, about the details of this program. Will genetic tumor profiling be conducted at many more cancer centers in the near future?

Guest: Monica Morrow, MD

Host: Mark Nolan Hill, MD

As we expand the scope of breast-conserving surgery for patients with breast cancer, have we focused too much on the cosmetic results, to the potential detriment of the oncologic outcome? It's a question that concerns some in the field of breast surgery, who believe the evidence to establish clinical efficacy for certain procedures is not yet in. Dr. Monica Morrow, chief of the breast service in the department of surgery, and the Anne Burnett Windfohr Chair of Clinical Oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, joins host Dr. Mark Nolan Hill to explore how we can address the potential pitfalls of emphasizing cosmesis in breast-conserving surgery while maintaining the sound principles of oncologic surgery.

Host: Jennifer Shu, MD, FAAP

Guest: Elvira Lang, MD

We've known anecdotally that simply waiting for the results of a tumor biopsy can be as stressful as coping with an unfavorable diagnosis itself. There is even some evidence to suggest that this stressful waiting period may subsequently impact the treatment of those patients who are found to have cancer. How do we explain this hypothesis? Further, how can we ease the anxiety of those patients awaiting cancer test results, and can we shorten the time patients must wait for their diagnosis? Host Dr. Jennifer Shu explores these key issues in the diagnostic process with Dr. Elvira Lang, associate professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School, and an interventional radiologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

Guest: Arthur Derse, MD, JD

Host: Shira Johnson, MD

Matters of life and death occur constantly in emergency departments, but some ED doctors are not well trained for the death that's expected. There is a new push inside hospitals and medical schools to train ED personnel in palliative care. Dr. Arthur Derse, director of medical and legal affairs and associate director of the Medical College of Wisconsin's Center for the Study of Bioethics, joins host Dr. Shira Johnson to discuss the new techniques being taught to ED residents for dealing with end-of-life issues. They also look at a new sub-specialty in emergency room medicine that focuses on hospice and palliative care.

Guest: Arthur Derse, MD, JD

Host: Shira Johnson, MD

More than 500,000 Americans die from cancer every year, and many of those people spend their final hours in the emergency department. More and more patients and their families turn to ED doctors to help make difficult decisions when it comes to end-of-life issues. Dr. Arthur Derse, director of medical and legal affairs and associate director of the Medical College of Wisconsin's Center for the Study of Bioethics and professor of bioethics and emergency medicine, joins host Dr. Shira Johnson to look at how doctors can help terminally ill patients and their loved ones when it comes to living wills, life support and pain management.

Guest: Marc Hedrick, MD

Host: Bruce Japsen

Many view the promise of stem cells as something far off in the distance, but these regenerative cells are nearing commercialization in the area of cosmetic and plastic surgery, particularly for women who are in need of reconstructive breast surgery. Dr. Marc Hedrick, president of San Diego based Cytori Therapeutics, tells the Chicago Tribune's Bruce Japsen about a commercialized device in Europe that uses adult stem cells derived from fat as a way to reconstruct breasts following surgery. Clinical trials may begin in the US in the next year.

Guest: Scott Waldman, MD, PhD

Host: Lee Freedman, MD

How is the biomarker guanylyl cyclase 2C helping to predict colorectal cancer recurrence rates? Host Dr. Lee Freedman welcomes Dr. Scott Waldman, professor in the departments of medicine and biochemistry at Thomas Jefferson University, to discuss how this biomarker found in regional lymph nodes can predict the recurrence rate for colorectal cancer patients. How does the presence of metastatic tumor cells predict clinical outcomes?