Headlines
Theodorescu Appointed Director of the University of Arizona Cancer Center
Dan Theodorescu, MD, PhD, has been appointed director of the University of Arizona Cancer Center. Dr. Theodorescu is a leader in bladder cancer research. He has also served as director of Cedars-Sinai Cancer, in Los Angeles, and the University of Colorado Cancer Center.
Stand Up for Science Rallies Set for March 7 Nationwide
Stand Up for Science is supporting rallies in Washington, DC, and 31 other U.S. cities on Friday, March 7. The grassroots group aims to defend science as a public good and a pillar of social, political, and economic progress, calling on policymakers, institutions, and the scientific community to uphold the integrity of science and ensure it benefits all people. At least 40 AACI member cancer centers are located within an hour of a rally site and we encourage you to participate in a rally near y…
Register Today for the 17th Annual AACI CRI Meeting
Registration is open for the 17th Annual AACI Clinical Research Innovation (CRI) Meeting, June 23-25 at the Loews Chicago O'Hare Hotel in Rosemont, IL. A discounted early registration rate will be available through Monday, March 17. The programming for this year's CRI meeting, "Driving Solutions Together," will center on fostering inclusive practices and expanding community impact.
Join AACI and AACR in Washington for 2025 Hill Day
Registration is now open for AACI's joint Hill Day with the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), which will take place on Thursday, May 22, in Washington, DC.
Your participation in Hill Day is crucial to sharing our message with legislators: that stable, predictable funds for the National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute are critical for advancing research and care at our nation’s cancer centers.
Register for Upcoming PCLI, CARDS Webinars
Registration is open for two upcoming AACI webinars. "From Outreach to Action: Embedding Community Perspectives in Cancer Research" is scheduled for Thursday, March 20, and "Statistical Approaches to Bridging Gaps in Catchment Area Data" will be held on Tuesday, March 25. As always, AACI webinars are free and open to all faculty and staff at our member cancer centers.
Nominations Open for 2025 AACI Awards
Pictured, clockwise from top: 2024 recipients of AACI's Champion for Cures, Distinguished Scientist, and Cancer Health Equity awardsPhotos by Randy BeliceAACI members are invited to submit nominations for the 2025 Cancer Health Equity and Champion for Cures awards. The submission deadline for both awards is Friday, May 2. Any faculty and staff at an AACI member institution may submit a nomination for one or both awards. Recipients will be selected from the slate of nominees by AACI's Board of D…
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Flatiron Joins AACI Tech Gold
AACI welcomes Flatiron to its Tech Gold members. Flatiron Health is a healthtech company expanding the possibilities for point of care oncology solutions and using data for good to power smarter care for every person with cancer. Through machine learning and AI, real-world evidence, and clinical trial breakthroughs, we are transforming patients’ experiences into knowledge and creating a more modern, connected oncology ecosystem.”
News from the Centers
Blood Cancer Expert Honored With Research Award
The GVHD Alliance has honored Shernan Holtan, MD, chief of blood and marrow transplantation at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, as the recipient of the 2025 Lukas D. Wartman Award. This recognition acknowledges Dr. Holtan’s groundbreaking contributions to improving outcomes for patients battling graft-versus-host disease.
Postdoctoral Associate Selected as Forbeck Scholar
Emma Guilbaud, PhD, a postdoctoral associate at Fox Chase Cancer Center, has been selected as a Forbeck Scholar by the William Guy Forbeck Research Foundation. This appointment recognizes early career cancer researchers for their achievements, research, and dedication to the field.
Ronai Earns Outstanding Investigator Award
Ze’ev Ronai, PhD, director of the Translational Research Institute at Cedars-Sinai, has received an Outstanding Investigator Award from the National Cancer Institute. The award comes with approximately $4.2 million over seven years to support research on how melanoma cells evade cancer therapies and the body’s immune system. This is the second time that Dr. Ronai has received the award.
Federal Funding Received to Integrate Clinical Research Into Primary Care Practices
With $1.2 million in initial funding, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences researchers will help the National Institutes of Health build a nationwide infrastructure that ultimately will improve access to clinical studies and help primary care clinicians more quickly implement new medical evidence into the everyday care they provide.
Federal Program Expands Treatment to Rural and Frontier Communities
Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah has received a federal contract award that will broaden access to specialized cancer care for Utah’s rural and frontier patients. The five-year research project was awarded by the ARPA-H PARADIGM program. HCI will accomplish the program objectives by building upon its existing Huntsman at Home™ program.
Chang to Lead Houston Methodist Academic Institute
Jenny Chang, MD, MBBChir, MHCM, has been chosen to lead the Houston Methodist Academic Institute. Dr. Chang has led the Dr. Mary and Ron Neal Cancer Center since 2010. Nestor F. Esnaola, MD, MPH, MBA, FACS, will serve as interim director of the cancer center while a national search is conducted to replace Dr. Chang.
New Interim Leadership Announced
UPMC Hillman Cancer Center has announced a new interim director, Kathryn Schmitz, PhD, MPH, and interim deputy director, José P. Zevallos, MD, MPH. The former interim director, Jeremy Rich, MD, MHS, MBA, has accepted a new role outside the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC.
Davis Named Surgical Oncology Lead
This news has been reposted under the correct source.
Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University
A type of aggressive, treatment-resistant brain tumor has a distinct population of immune cells that support its growth, according to new research led by investigators at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center
Many Medicare patients with advanced cancer receive potentially aggressive treatment at the expense of supportive care, according to an analysis of Medicare records. The study examined the quality of end-of-life care among 33,744 Medicare decedents from diverse ethnic backgrounds, age 66 or older, who died from breast, prostate, pancreatic, or lung cancers.
The Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai
An international team of doctors led by Joshua Brody, MD, director of the Lymphoma Immunotherapy Program at The Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai, has made a major breakthrough in treating a common and challenging form of cancer called diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.
Duke Cancer Institute
At the 25th annual Meeting of the Society of Urologic Oncology, Daniel J. George, MD, presented a session on real-world treatment and clinical outcomes for patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer treated with olaparib. Dr. George co-chairs the Center for Prostate and Urologic Cancers at the Duke Cancer Institute.
Stanford Cancer Institute
Stanford researchers have conducted the first large-scale screen of single nucleotide variants, homing in on fewer than 400 that are essential to initiate and drive cancer growth. These variants control several common biological pathways, including those governing whether and how well a cell can repair damage to its DNA, how it produces energy, and how it interacts with and moves through its microenvironment.
University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center
Like a football team disrupting the opponent’s play, researchers at UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center are designing a gel to prevent cancers caused by human papillomaviruses (HPVs). With no other antiviral treatments for HPV diseases available, the antiviral gel may help people who are unable to get the HPV vaccine. The gel repurposes an FDA-approved melanoma treatment and is currently in preclinical studies.
VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center
Scientists at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center have identified an innovative combination of treatment strategies that work collaboratively to effectively kill acute myeloid leukemia (AML). New research findings suggest that a class of drugs known as MCL-1 (myeloid leukemia cell-1) inhibitors interact with a type of kinase inhibitor that targets the SRC gene to efficiently trigger cell death in AML cells.
UK Markey Cancer Center
A new UK Markey Cancer Center study provides important insights for future clinical trials in treating advanced cervical cancer by establishing a five-month progression-free survival benchmark for evaluating new therapies.
UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center
Men undergoing radiation therapy for prostate cancer who experience side effects early in treatment may face a higher risk of developing more serious long-term urinary and bowel health issues, according to a new study led by investigators from the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.
UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center
Researchers at UC San Francisco have found that some cancers, like glioma, make unique, jumbled proteins that make them stand out. These newly recognized cancer-specific proteins, or antigens, could speed the development of immunotherapies that recognize and attack hard-to-treat tumors.
Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center
An enzyme called cyclin-dependent kinase 2 (CDK2) regulates the cell cycle and may have the potential to drive therapeutic resistance to common breast cancer drugs – including a class of targeted treatments known as CDK4/6 inhibitors. A new study led by Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center scientists highlights the therapeutic impact of CDK2 inhibitors.
Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center at Baylor College of Medicine
An 18-year survivor of neuroblastoma, a solid childhood tumor that develops in immature nerve cells, is believed to represent the longest reported remission to date in a patient treated with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy.
Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University
Emory University chemists invented a reaction to streamline the total synthesis of a compound, phaeocaulisin A, extracted from a plant used in traditional Chinese medicine. In laboratory dish experiments conducted with biologists at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, researchers showed the compound’s efficacy against HER2-positive breast cancer cells and triple-negative breast cancer cells. An analogue of the compound boosted this efficacy.
Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah
In a randomized clinical trial, researchers from Huntsman Cancer Institute have found that short-course, higher dose vaginal brachytherapy for endometrial cancer had similar effectiveness to more frequent, lower dose sessions.
Fox Chase Cancer Center, Temple Health
Fox Chase Cancer Center researchers, with colleagues from Moffitt Cancer Center, recently published an updated review of guidelines governing the use of neoadjuvant and adjuvant therapy for patients with melanoma.
University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center
In two studies, University of Michigan researchers are the first to demonstrate in the U.S. that self-sampling is just as effective as speculum-based testing for human papillomavirus (HPV) detection.
University of Florida Health Cancer Center
By characterizing the demographics and comorbidities of patients screened for lung cancer in three states, a new study led by the UF Health Cancer Center lays the groundwork for a personalized approach to screening for the deadliest cancer.
The University of Kansas Cancer Center
A team of scientists at The University of Kansas Cancer Center’s Cancer Biology research program are exploring ways to improve the CA125 blood test, one of the primary tools for detecting ovarian cancer, as well as developing new methods for identifying ovarian cancer biomarkers.
University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center
A team of researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center have analyzed the pre-treatment CT scans of patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma to locate radiomic biomarkers that can be used to predict the aggressiveness of the disease and its response to treatment.
UPMC Hillman Cancer Center
In patients with high-risk HER2-positive breast cancer, postsurgery, or adjuvant, treatment with trastuzumab emtansine reduced the long-term risk of death or invasive disease by 46 percent and improved survival compared to trastuzumab alone, according to the final results of the phase 3 KATHERINE clinical trial led by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC Hillman Cancer Center.
Comprehensive Cancer Center St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
Through the Global Platform for Access to Childhood Cancer Medicines, the World Health Organization (WHO) and St. Jude have begun distributing critically-needed childhood cancer medicines in two of six pilot countries. Medicines are currently being delivered to Mongolia and Uzbekistan, with shipments planned for Ecuador, Jordan, Nepal, and Zambia.
VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center
Scientists at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center have identified an innovative combination of treatment strategies that work collaboratively to effectively kill acute myeloid leukemia (AML). New research findings suggest that a class of drugs known as MCL-1 (myeloid leukemia cell-1) inhibitors interact with a type of kinase inhibitor that targets the SRC gene to efficiently trigger cell death in AML cells.
Patient Advocate Foundation
Season 9 of the Patient Advocate Foundation's (PAF) acclaimed podcast, Advocates in Action, is now streaming. Please listen to the first episode, featuring PAF's Gwen Darien in conversation with Freddie White-Johnson, Robert A. Winn, MD, and Reginald Tucker-Seeley, ScD, as they share the common and unique barriers to care in the regions they serve, along with the solutions they champion.
Stephenson Cancer Center, University of Oklahoma
OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center has launched a mobile lung cancer screening bus, in collaboration with the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust and others, to bring critical early detection capabilities directly to communities across Oklahoma.
Stanford Cancer Institute
Stanford researchers have conducted the first large-scale screen of single nucleotide variants, homing in on fewer than 400 that are essential to initiate and drive cancer growth. These variants control several common biological pathways, including those governing whether and how well a cell can repair damage to its DNA, how it produces energy, and how it interacts with and moves through its microenvironment.
UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center
Men undergoing radiation therapy for prostate cancer who experience side effects early in treatment may face a higher risk of developing more serious long-term urinary and bowel health issues, according to a new study led by investigators from the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.