April Newsmakers

This page will be continuously updated throughout the month of April.

FDA Clears IND for Novel Immunotherapy in Solid Tumors (Targeted Oncology)
Features Ned Patz, MD

Duke professor lands $13.7M to fund rapid, portable diagnostic test for pathogens, illnesses (WRAL)
Features Ashutosh Chilkoti, PhD

Op-Ed: As a doctor, I’m bracing for the possibility my home and hospital worlds may collide during the pandemic (LA Times)
Features Nathan Gray, MD

LISTEN: What's the Role of Palliative Care During a Pandemic? (WNYC)
Features Arif Kamal, MD

Shortage of palliative care in the US could amplify suffering for coronavirus patients (USA Today)
Features Arif Kamal, MD

How COVID-19 is Impacting Patients with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (Cure)
Features Danielle Brander, MD

WATCH: 10-year-old Gets Emotional Birthday Surprise through Hospital Window (NBC News)
Features Duke patient

Cary cancer ‘thriver’ and co-workers collect 1,200 gloves, 500 N95 masks for healthcare workers (WNCN)
Features Duke cancer patient and DCI supporter Ryan Switzer

How to check for testicular cancer, the most common type of cancer in men ages 15 to 35 (Insider)
Features Michael Harrison, MD

How to Live in the Face of Fear: Lessons From a Cancer Survivor (The New York Times)
Features Kate Bowler, PhD -- a Duke religion scholar

Dr. Secord on Frontline Maintenance Therapy in Ovarian Cancer (OncLive)
Features Angeles Secord, MD

WATCH: Dr. Polascik on Harmonizing Genetic Testing Guidelines in Prostate Cancer (OncLive)
Features Thomas J. Polascik, MD

Identifying Deficiencies in Inflammatory Breast Cancer Care (Clinical Oncology)
Features IBC Network

'Encouraging' Results With Pre-Op Therapy for DCIS (Medscape)
Features Shelley Hwang, MD

Ruxolitinib effective, safe for glucocorticoid-refractory acute GVHD (Healio/HemeOnc Today)
Features published research by Nelson Chao, MD, MBA

New hope for fixing health system failures to prevent and treat cervical cancer (Brookings Institution)
Features Andrea Thoumi, research director for global health at the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy, and Duke students Lillian Zhu, Rachel Mundaden and Karina Moreno Bueno

LISTEN: Episode 11: Germline Genetic Testing: What the Breast Surgeon Needs to Know (Society of Surgical Oncology podcast)
Features Jennifer Plichta, MD

WATCH: The cell surface marker CD123 is not the whole story, but it is highly significant in the identification of BPDCN. Dr David Rizzieri describes why surface markers are essential to creating a workup for different types of leukemias (BPDCN Info)
Features David Rizzieri, MD

Judd W. Moul, MD, FACS, on Triaging Patients with Prostate Cancer (Cancer Network)
Features Judd Moul, MD, FACS

OncoSec Appoints Renowned Oncologist and Immunologist, Herbert Kim Lyerly, M.D., Duke University, to its Board of Directors (OncoSec)

Duke Junior Rohin Maganti Named Goldwater Scholar (Duke Today)
Maganti works in the lab of Scott Floyd, MD, PhD

School of Medicine Celebrates 2020 Faculty Award Recipients (Duke SoM)
Features Joseph Moore, MD, and Jatin Roper, MD

School of Medicine faculty members awarded distinguished professorships (Duke SoM)
Features Scott Soderling, PhD, and Kathleen Cooney, MD, Sue Jinks-Robertson, PhD, and Ponugoti Vasantha Rao, PhD, and David Ashley, PhD

Duke Engineering Spinout Aims to Improve Cancer Drug Screening (Duke Biomedical Engineering)
Features Kris Wood, PhD

Papers

**Duke authors are in bold-type

Adapting to a pandemic - conducting oncology trials during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Clinical Cancer Research. Aaron C Tan, David M Ashley and Mustafa Khasraw.

Finally, a Successful Randomized Trial for GVHD New England Journal of Medicine. April 22, 2020. Nelson Chao, MD, MBA.

Variability of the Positive Predictive Value of PI-RADS for Prostate MRI across 26 Centers: Experience of the Society of Abdominal Radiology Prostate Cancer Disease-focused Panel RSNA. April 21, 2020. Antonio C. Westphalen , Charles E. McCulloch, Jordan M. Anaokar, Sandeep Arora, Nimrod S. Barashi, Jelle O. Barentsz, Tharakeswara K. Bathala, Leonardo K. Bittencourt, Michael T. Booker, Vaughn G. Braxton, Peter R. Carroll, David D. Casalino, Silvia D. Chang, Fergus V. Coakley, Ravjot Dhatt, Steven C. Eberhardt, Bryan R. Foster, Adam T. Froemming, Jurgen J. Fütterer, Dhakshina M. Ganeshan, Mark R. Gertner, Lori Mankowski Gettle, Sangeet Ghai, Rajan T. Gupta, Michael E. Hahn, Roozbeh Houshyar, Candice Kim, Chan Kyo Kim, Chandana Lall, Daniel J. A. Margolis, Stephen E. McRae, Aytekin Oto, Rosaleen B. Parsons, Nayana U. Patel, Peter A. Pinto, Thomas J. Polascik, Benjamin Spilseth, Juliana B. Starcevich, Varaha S. Tammisetti, Samir S. Taneja, Baris Turkbey, Sadhna Verma, John F. Ward, Christopher A. Warlick, Andrew R. Weinberger, Jinxing Yu, Ronald J. Zagoria, Andrew B. Rosenkrantz.

The Effect of Timing of Adjuvant Therapy on Survival following Esophagectomy Annals of Thoracic Surgery. April 21, 2020. Kristen E. Rhodin, M.D., Vignesh Raman, M.D., Oliver K. Jawitz, M.D., Betty C. Tong, M.D., M.H.S., David H. Harpole, M.D.,Thomas A. D’Amico, M.D.

Adjuvant Therapy is Effective for Melanoma Patients with a Positive Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy Who Forego Completion Lymphadenectomy Annals of Surgical Oncology. April 20, 2020. Norma E. Farrow, Vignesh Raman, Taylor P. Williams, Kayla Y. Nguyen, Douglas S. Tyler & Georgia M. Beasley.

A tumor-intrinsic PD-L1/NLRP3 inflammasome signaling pathway drives resistance to anti–PD-1 immunotherapy The Journal of Clinical Investigation. April 13, 2020. Balamayoora Theivanthiran, Kathy S. Evans, Nicholas C. DeVito, Michael Plebanek, Michael Sturdivant, Luke P. Wachsmuth, April K.S. Salama, Yubin Kang, David Hsu, Justin M. Balko, Douglas B. Johnson, Mark Starr, Andrew Nixon, Alisha Holtzhausen, and Brent A. Hanks.

The Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid Expansion and Impact along the Cancer-Care Continuum: A Systematic Review. Journal of the National Cancer Institute. April 11, 2020. Haley A Moss, MD, MBA, Jenny Wu, BS, Samantha J Kaplan, PhD, S Yousuf Zafar, MD, MHS, FASCO.

Safety at the Time of the COVID-19 Pandemic: How to Keep our Oncology Patients and Healthcare Workers Safe JNCCN. April 9, 2020. [From JNCCN: This JNCCN Special Feature will appear in the May issue of the journal, but in the interest of getting information about dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic available to our readership as early as possible, we are providing this preprint] Pelin Cinar, MD, MS; Timothy Kubal, MD, MBA; Alison Freifeld, MD; Asmita Mishra, MD; Lawrence Shulman, MD; James Bachman, MPA; Rafael Fonseca, MD; Hope Uronis, MD, MHS; Dori Klemanski, DNP;K im Slusser, MSN, CHPN, NEA-BC;Matthew Lunning, DO;Catherine Liu, MD.

Optimizing Cardiovascular Health in Patients With Cancer: A Practical Review of Risk Assessment, Monitoring, and Prevention of Cancer Treatment–Related Cardiovascular Toxicity. ASCO Educational Book. March 26, 2020. Susan F. Dent, MD; Robin Kikuchi; Lavanya Kondapalli, MD; Roohi Ismail-Khan, MD; Christine Brezden-Masley, MD; Ana Barac, MD; and Michael Fradley, MD.

Strategies to Prevent Cardiovascular Toxicity in Breast Cancer: Is It Ready for Primetime? Journal of Clinical Medicine. March 25, 2020. Robin Kikuchi, Nishant P Shah, Susan F Dent.

The effect of extent of resection on outcomes in patients with limited stage small cell lung cancer. JTCVS. March 22, 2020. Vignesh Raman, MD, Oliver K. Jawitz, MD, Chi-Fu Jeffrey Yang, MD, Soraya L. Voigt, MD, Thomas A. D'Amico, MD, David H. Harpole, MD, Betty C. Tong, MD, MHS.
*Read at the International Thoracic Surgical Oncology Summit 2019, New York, New York, September 27-28, 2019, and received first prize in the poster competition.

Management of Male Breast Cancer: ASCO Guideline. Journal of Clinical Oncology. Feb. 14, 2020. Michael J. Hassett, MD, MPH; Mark R. Somerfield, PhD; Elisha R. Baker, PhD; Fatima Cardoso, MD; Kari J. Kansal, MD; Dylan C. Kwait, MD; Jennifer K. Plichta, MD, MS; Charité Ricker, MS; Anna Roshal, MD; Kathryn J. Ruddy, MD, MPH; Joshua D. Safer, MD; Catherine Van Poznak, MD; Rachel L. Yung, MD; and Sharon H. Giordano, MD, MPH.