TheoryLab

For people who have had certain cancers or certain patterns of cancer in their family, genetic testing and counseling can be a lifesaver.

Heather Hampel, a Professor and genetic counselor at The Ohio State University’s Comprehensive Cancer Center, explains how genetic testing can help prevent cancer and personalize treatments for cancer patients.

She talks about her research into breast cancer health equity, which is funded by the American Cancer Society, and about Lynch Syndrome, which increases risk for several types of cancer that are preventable if you know you have Lynch Syndrome.

She also describes some of the red flags that indicate someone should seek cancer genetic counseling; she encourages such individuals to visit www.findageneticcounselor.com.

You can learn more about genetic testing and counseling on the American Cancer Society’s website: https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/genetics/understanding-genetic-testing-for-cancer.html

2:45 -What is a genetic counselor?

3:34 - How can genetic counselors help someone who has had a cancer diagnosis

9:02 – The importance of HR3235: the 2019 Access to Genetics Counselor Services Act

“What this bill would do…is it actually would make genetic counselors recognized providers for Medicare.”

11:44 – On her research into Lynch Syndrome, which increases risk for several types of cancer that are preventable if you know you have Lynch Syndrome.

“We think 1 out of every 279 individuals has Lynch Syndrome, yet 95% of individuals with Lynch Syndrome are not aware of their diagnosis.”

16:57 – On cascade testing, when genetic testing is given to at-risk relatives of someone with a hereditary condition

20:33 – How genetic testing can sometimes help personalize your cancer treatment

23:27 – Her new American Cancer Society-funded research project, “Turning the Page on Breast Cancer”

27:12 – Some of the red flags that indicate someone should seek cancer genetic counseling

Dr. Anees Chagpar has made a difference in the lives of so many patients and families, not only as a breast cancer surgeon, but also through her research. Her groundbreaking study proved that removing just a little more healthy tissue during surgery cut the need for patients to have a second surgery in half.

In this interview she spoke at length about that study—including the rationale behind it, its innovative design, and how it was shown to work in different hospitals—and she also talked about the special relationship she has with her patients.

Anees Chagpar, MD, MBA, MPH, FACS, FRCS(C), is a breast surgical oncologist and full Professor in the Department of Surgery at Yale School of Medicine.

2:57 – What motivated her to be a breast cancer surgeon?

4:51 – The special relationship that she has with her patients

6:55 – How breast cancer surgery has changed over the years

12:36 – On her groundbreaking study showing that taking just a little bit more healthy tissue initially can help breast cancer patients avoid a return trip to the operating room

28:25 – How will other surgeons find out about these practice-changing findings?

30:34 – On the massive open online class (MOOC) she teaches at Yale called “Introduction to Breast Cancer.” Who takes this class? Why is teaching this course important to her? https://www.coursera.org/learn/breast-cancer-causes-prevention

32:58 – What she would like cancer patients and caregivers to know

Dr. Anees Chagpar has made a difference in the lives of so many patients and families, not only as a breast cancer surgeon, but also through her research. Her groundbreaking study proved that removing just a little more healthy tissue during surgery cut the need for patients to have a second surgery in half.

In this interview she spoke at length about that study—including the rationale behind it, its innovative design, and how it was shown to work in different hospitals—and she also talked about the special relationship she has with her patients.

Anees Chagpar, MD, MBA, MPH, FACS, FRCS(C), is a breast surgical oncologist and full Professor in the Department of Surgery at Yale School of Medicine.

2:57 – What motivated her to be a breast cancer surgeon?

4:51 – The special relationship that she has with her patients

6:55 – How breast cancer surgery has changed over the years

12:36 – On her groundbreaking study showing that taking just a little bit more healthy tissue initially can help breast cancer patients avoid a return trip to the operating room

28:25 – How will other surgeons find out about these practice-changing findings?

30:34 – On the massive open online class (MOOC) she teaches at Yale called “Introduction to Breast Cancer.” Who takes this class? Why is teaching this course important to her? https://www.coursera.org/learn/breast-cancer-causes-prevention

32:58 – What she would like cancer patients and caregivers to know

Sarah Gollust’s research focuses on how scientific evidence is translated to the public, and how that process can shape public opinion, health policy, and patient decision making.

She has applied her work to public health issues such as vaccines, mammograms, health disparities, and the Affordable Care Act. Her research also “yields insight into how communication to the public and policymakers can be more effective.”

Sarah Gollust, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Division of Health Policy and Management at the University of Minnesota.

3:26 – On some of the changes we’ve seen in health communication over the past decade

5:57 – Two ways the media can affect health-related outcomes or decisions

11:25 – On how the news media has covered recommendations on mammograms

“We’re trying to better understand how references to competing messaging in the news media environment might affect downstream women’s health attitudes and beliefs and ultimately behaviors.”

16:17 – How women’s attitudes about mammograms were affected by the news media

25:00 – How can scientists better engage with the media and the public?

30:40 – Challenges that journalists face in todays environment, and how scientists can help

34:37 – Helpful advice on how scientists can get better at disseminating their work and translating it to the public and scientific community

38:10 – How ACS funding impacted her research and allowed her to mentor younger scientists

40:05 – A message she’d like to share with cancer patients and caregivers

Sarah Gollust’s research focuses on how scientific evidence is translated to the public, and how that process can shape public opinion, health policy, and patient decision making.

She has applied her work to public health issues such as vaccines, mammograms, health disparities, and the Affordable Care Act. Her research also “yields insight into how communication to the public and policymakers can be more effective.”

Sarah Gollust, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Division of Health Policy and Management at the University of Minnesota.

3:26 – On some of the changes we’ve seen in health communication over the past decade

5:57 – Two ways the media can affect health-related outcomes or decisions

11:25 – On how the news media has covered recommendations on mammograms

“We’re trying to better understand how references to competing messaging in the news media environment might affect downstream women’s health attitudes and beliefs and ultimately behaviors.”

16:17 – How women’s attitudes about mammograms were affected by the news media

25:00 – How can scientists better engage with the media and the public?

30:40 – Challenges that journalists face in todays environment, and how scientists can help

34:37 – Helpful advice on how scientists can get better at disseminating their work and translating it to the public and scientific community

38:10 – How ACS funding impacted her research and allowed her to mentor younger scientists

40:05 – A message she’d like to share with cancer patients and caregivers

American Cancer Society scientists project that approximately 33,330 men will die from prostate cancer in America in 2020. The majority of these deaths are due to the development of advanced stage castration-resistant disease, which typically progresses to bone metastatic prostate cancer.

In this conversation, two-time American Cancer Society grantee Leah Cook, PhD, talks us through the problem of bone metastatic prostate cancer. Why is it so hard to treat? What is happening inside the bones? And why is she excited about recent discoveries made in her lab?

Leah Cook, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and Microbiology at the Univ. of Nebraska Medical Center.

3:36 - Where in the body does prostate cancer most frequently go when it moves?

4:49 – How many men with prostate cancer will experience bone metastatic disease?

5:52 – On how bone metastatic prostate cancer is treated

8:30 – On what happens to bones when prostate cancer cells invade

10:32 – On why immune cells are present in bone cells

12:11 – On how her lab is trying to understand what happens to immune cells in bones that have been invaded by prostate cancer

13:52 – Why don’t immune cells in the bone recognize and kill bone metastatic prostate cancer cells?

19:23 – How could the work of her lab change how we treat metastatic prostate cancer?

21:48 – What she’s most excited about in her research

23:42 – The role of ACS funding in her career

25:11 – A message she’d like to share with cancer survivors and caregivers

27:32 – On health equity issues in metastatic prostate cancer, especially among African American men

American Cancer Society scientists project that approximately 33,330 men will die from prostate cancer in America in 2020. The majority of these deaths are due to the development of advanced stage castration-resistant disease, which typically progresses to bone metastatic prostate cancer.

In this conversation, two-time American Cancer Society grantee Leah Cook, PhD, talks us through the problem of bone metastatic prostate cancer. Why is it so hard to treat? What is happening inside the bones? And why is she excited about recent discoveries made in her lab?

Leah Cook, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and Microbiology at the Univ. of Nebraska Medical Center.

3:36 - Where in the body does prostate cancer most frequently go when it moves?

4:49 – How many men with prostate cancer will experience bone metastatic disease?

5:52 – On how bone metastatic prostate cancer is treated

8:30 – On what happens to bones when prostate cancer cells invade

10:32 – On why immune cells are present in bone cells

12:11 – On how her lab is trying to understand what happens to immune cells in bones that have been invaded by prostate cancer

13:52 – Why don’t immune cells in the bone recognize and kill bone metastatic prostate cancer cells?

19:23 – How could the work of her lab change how we treat metastatic prostate cancer?

21:48 – What she’s most excited about in her research

23:42 – The role of ACS funding in her career

25:11 – A message she’d like to share with cancer survivors and caregivers

27:32 – On health equity issues in metastatic prostate cancer, especially among African American men

Oncolytic viruses are cancer-killing viruses engineered to target and replicate in cancer cells and leave normal cells unharmed. They can also alert the immune system to attack the cancer cells.

Susanne Warner, MD, is conducting research around a novel cancer-killing virus that can attack tumors in three different ways: by infecting tumor cells, by shutting down blood supply to the tumor, and by training a patient’s immune system to attack the tumor.

Dr. Warner is also a surgical oncologist, and she has a deep interest in patient care that goes beyond the operating room – she talks at length about helping patients through their emotional and spiritual journey.

Susanne Warner, MD, is Assistant Professor in the Division of Surgical Oncology and Department of Surgery at City of Hope.

2:07 – What is an oncolytic virus?

3:09 – How do they find cancer cells and how do they kill them?

7:17 – How do you make an oncolytic virus in the lab?

8:53 – One of the ongoing debates in the scientific community about oncolytic viruses

“The ideal oncolytic viruses in our opinion are potent, quickly dividing and then what we call immunogenic. And that means that the type of tumor cell destruction that they cause makes a splash, essentially, and gets the attention of the immune system so that it can mount an anti-viral response, which then is also a robust anti-tumor response if enough of those tumor cells have been destroyed and revealed themselves to the immune system.”

11:41 – Why the immune system doesn’t just respond on its own to cancer, and how oncolytic viral therapy can rip a hole in the “invisibility cloak” that cancer cells wear

14:07 – The promise of clinical therapies combining immunotherapy with oncolytic virus therapy

17:24 – The surgeon-patient relationship and her interest in helping patients in their spiritual and emotional journey

21:55 – Her message for cancer patients and survivors

25:08 – The impact of ACS funding on her career

Oncolytic viruses are cancer-killing viruses engineered to target and replicate in cancer cells and leave normal cells unharmed. They can also alert the immune system to attack the cancer cells.

Susanne Warner, MD, is conducting research around a novel cancer-killing virus that can attack tumors in three different ways: by infecting tumor cells, by shutting down blood supply to the tumor, and by training a patient’s immune system to attack the tumor.

Dr. Warner is also a surgical oncologist, and she has a deep interest in patient care that goes beyond the operating room – she talks at length about helping patients through their emotional and spiritual journey.

Susanne Warner, MD, is Assistant Professor in the Division of Surgical Oncology and Department of Surgery at City of Hope.

2:07 – What is an oncolytic virus?

3:09 – How do they find cancer cells and how do they kill them?

7:17 – How do you make an oncolytic virus in the lab?

8:53 – One of the ongoing debates in the scientific community about oncolytic viruses

“The ideal oncolytic viruses in our opinion are potent, quickly dividing and then what we call immunogenic. And that means that the type of tumor cell destruction that they cause makes a splash, essentially, and gets the attention of the immune system so that it can mount an anti-viral response, which then is also a robust anti-tumor response if enough of those tumor cells have been destroyed and revealed themselves to the immune system.”

11:41 – Why the immune system doesn’t just respond on its own to cancer, and how oncolytic viral therapy can rip a hole in the “invisibility cloak” that cancer cells wear

14:07 – The promise of clinical therapies combining immunotherapy with oncolytic virus therapy

17:24 – The surgeon-patient relationship and her interest in helping patients in their spiritual and emotional journey

21:55 – Her message for cancer patients and survivors

25:08 – The impact of ACS funding on her career

A physician-scientist and thought leader whose research has helped change the clinical care of leukemia patients, Kevin Shannon, MD, continues to shape the field.

In this conversation, Dr. Shannon takes us through the challenges and hopes of leukemia research and describes what has him most excited about the state of cancer research.

Kevin Shannon, MD, is Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, where he holds the Roma and Marvin Auerback Distinguished Professorship of Molecular Oncology. For his seminal research accomplishments, Dr. Shannon was named an American Cancer Society Research Professor.

2:09 – What are leukemias?

4:37 – What people should know about the state of leukemia research: “Leukemia has been one of the diseases where we’ve been able to apply the principle of understanding the underlying molecular basis of the disease to developing better treatments, and then implementing those treatments in the clinic.”

7:13 – How he decides which mutations in the DNA are the most important to study

9:53 – The difference between a DNA mutation and chromosomal abnormality, the problems they cause, and how they can even occur together

16:06 – What it means to say something is “druggable.”

18:36 – How leukemias become resistant to treatment

21:48 – How do you treat a disease that’s constantly changing?

25:12 – How his research provides insight into some of the broader questions in cancer research, beyond leukemia

27:56 – What excites him most about the state of cancer research today

32:19 – The impact of American Cancer Society funding on his career

36:35 – The outsize value of Institutional Research Grants, small pilot awards that the American Cancer Society awards to organizations such as the University of California at San Francisco

39:25 – His thoughts on the partnership between the American Cancer Society and St. Baldrick’s Foundation “to raise $11 million to fund the most innovative biological and clinical laboratory studies that have the greatest potential to quickly deliver new and improved treatments for kids with cancer.” (http://pressroom.cancer.org/StBaldricks2019)

42:26 – A message for cancer patients and caregivers