Reitman Awarded NCI K08 Career Development Award

Zach Reitman, MD, Ph.D., was recently awarded a  Mentored Clinical Scientist Research Career Development Award from the National Cancer Institute titled "Enhancing the Efficacy of Radiation Therapy for brainstem glioma by Targeting ATM."

The award, which went into effect on August 1, provides salary support for career development and totals $1.1M over five years.

"The goal of the K08 award is to help me build up my brain tumor research program," said Reitman. "A key component of the award is mentorship from Dr. David Kirsch, a world expert on genetically engineered mouse models and radiation biology in our department, and Dr. David Ashley, the director of the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center. The K08 will help me determine if the immune system helps mediate treatment responses in childhood brain tumors. The results will help design the next generation of clinical trials. I will use cutting-edge genetically engineered mouse models and single-cell RNA-sequencing approaches to complete the work."

The Reitman Lab was also recently awarded a Chadtough Defeat DIPG (Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma) New Investigator Award for $250,000 over two years entitled "Dissecting mechanisms of radioresistance associated with p53 mutations in DIPG." Funding for that grant started on July 1.

"The New Investigator Award is helping me to find out why some pediatric brain tumors are resistant to radiation therapy and other treatments," said Reitman. "Completing the work will help design new treatments that overcome resistance and improve outcomes for patients with DIPG, a rare but lethal childhood brain tumor."

This article originally appeared on the Duke Department of Radiation Oncology website and was posted here with the author's permission.

Related News

An illustration shows a spiral strand of DNA with people standing on it looking through telescopes
Illustration by Ken Orvidas

Looking to the Future of Cancer Care

When Joseph O. Moore, MD, came to Duke as a fellow in 1975, he and his mentors treated chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) with a chemotherapy regimen that was like a “wet blanket.” It suppressed the cancer for a few years. “But it didn’t change the trajectory of the disease,” Moore said. Patients developed acute leukemia, which was almost always fatal. By the early 1990s, younger patients could achieve a cure with a bone marrow transplant, though complications were common. By 1999, Moore was the Duke investigator for a national study of a targeted drug, imatinib, which stops leukemia cells from growing by shutting down a key protein. When imatinib was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2001, it transformed CML into a disease easily treated by taking a pill. When Moore retired from clinical practice in 2019, he was involved in a study following people with CML who had been taking imatinib long term, which showed they could safely stop therapy. The CML example provides a snapshot of just how far cancer treatment has come in the last 50 years. For many patients, “There’s an expectation of success and people living normal lives,” said Moore, professor emeritus of medicine. Much of that progress can be traced to research funded by the “war on cancer,” which launched in 1971 when congress passed the National Cancer Act. The act gave the National Cancer Institute (NCI) the authority and funds to create a national cancer program. The backbone is a network of comprehensive cancer centers that provide patient care and conduct rigorous research to find new and better ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat cancer.

Headshot of Hai Yan

Yan Receives International Prize for Translational Neuroscience

Duke Cancer Institute brain tumor researcher Hai Yan, MD, PhD, was awarded theInternational Prize for Translational Neuroscience of the Gertrud Reemtsma Foundationat a ceremony in Cologne, Germany, on August 26, 2021.The prize recognizes Yan’s identification of genetic mutations linked to gliomas, the most common form of primary brain tumors. Through genomic studies, Yan’s research team found that mutations in the metabolic enzymes IDH1 and IDH2 were present in 70 percent of progressive malignant gliomas. The discovery and subsequent research could provide evidence to support a novel therapeutic approach to the treatment of gliomas. Yan is the Henry S. Friedman Distinguished Professor of Neuro-Oncology, Professor of Pathology, and member of The Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke Cancer Institute. The International Prize for Translational Neuroscienceawards outstanding basic neurological research and includes a prize of 60,000 Euros. The award has been given to scientists from 12 different countries, whose discoveries and contributions represent original and significant achievements. Darell Bigner, MD, PhD, directoremeritusof the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center, received the award in 2008. This article originally appeared on theDuke Neurosurgery websiteand was mirrored here with permission of the author