Ohio State’s cancer program had enjoyed many years of growth and rising acclaim, and Pollock realized that the next director would be challenged to guide it to even greater prominence.
Two years later, he’s not only glad he accepted the position but also believes that, thanks to continuous help from many talented professionals, the cancer program remains “on a positive trajectory and headed in the right direction” for pursuing its vision of a cancer-free world.
Those were words that both Pollock and William Farrar, MD, CEO of the James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute, used when delivering a “State of the Cancer Program” address for the OSUCCC – James in which they listed several recent accomplishments and reviewed some exciting research and clinical initiatives that have been launched or are being planned.
Their positive presentation reflected Pollock’s shift from initial surprise to calm confidence as OSUCCC director.
“In candor, I was not looking for this position,” says Pollock, a surgical oncologist and sarcoma specialist who joined the medical faculty at Ohio State in 2013 after 31 years at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. “I felt fulfilled in my roles here as director of the Division of Surgical Oncology, surgeon-in-chief for the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center, maintaining a research lab that is still active, and mentoring inside and outside the division that I led, in addition to managing my surgical practice.”
Although surprised at first by the job offer, Pollock says he would have accepted it “just on behalf of the described need for stability and continuity within the role,” but he became even more interested after discussing its possibilities with Ohio State president Michael Drake, MD, executive vice president and Provost Bruce McPheron, and Wexner Medical Center board chairman Les Wexner.
“The opportunity to have an even greater impact on the cancer program, medical center and university was very intriguing,” Pollock explains, noting that he also had personal motivations for wanting to serve more deeply. He has three children who are students at Ohio State, and he is being treated at the OSUCCC – James for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), a story he has widely shared since his January 2017 diagnosis.
As part of Pollock’s treatment, he is on a clinical trial involving the drug ibrutinib and its role in treating CLL. He points out that OSUCCC – James researchers have played a lead role in the drug’s development and clinical application, “and there too I have a strong sense of gratitude for the depth and breadth of our cancer program. So I was pleased and honored to accept the position as director.”
One of the first matters he directed his attention toward was the application process for the next five-year renewal of the program’s National Cancer Institute (NCI) designation as a comprehensive cancer center. The voluminous application was submitted in January 2020.
“I’m fortunate to be surrounded by people who were not only interested in helping with this task but who had participated in the effort before, including some who were here in 2015 when, under my predecessor’s leadership, we received a perfect score,” Pollock says. “Our application contains detailed updates of our five research programs (Cancer Control, Leukemia Research, Cancer Biology, Molecular Carcinogenesis and Chemoprevention, and Translational Therapeutics).”
Another major task that required attention, he says, was continuing to recruit medical faculty who are adept at cancer research.
“We do this by working with the deans of several colleges at Ohio State that have joint faculty recruitment processes with us,” Pollock says, noting that the OSUCCC’s nearly 300 cancer researchers collectively represent 11 of the university’s 15 colleges. “We’ve experienced a remarkable period of growth over the past several months by recruiting over 40 senior- and junior-level medical scientists.”
Pollock also points to several new initiatives either under way or being planned. Among the first to take shape will be a Proton Therapy Center that will be contained in a multi-story West Campus Outpatient Facility to be completed in 2022. The Proton Therapy Center, a collaboration with Nationwide Children’s Hospital (NCH), will provide state-of-the-art radiation oncology treatment for adults and children.
Also under development is the Pelotonia Institute for Immuno-Oncology (PIIO) led by recently recruited Zihai Li, MD, PhD, who serves as founding director of the PIIO and will help the cancer program build on its already strong endeavors in immunotherapy, which is considered to be the next frontier in cancer treatment.
“We already have formidable strengths in cell-based immune therapies, and these are promulgated as a joint program at our main-campus medical center and at NCH,” Pollock says. “Immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy is another area in which we have international visibility. Under Dr. Li’s guidance, we’ll expand our immunotherapy presence by recruiting 30 to 35 faculty over the next five years to develop platforms for collaborative immune discovery and cutting-edge clinical trials.”
Still another area of innovation, Pollock says, is a program in cancer engineering, which is being developed with Ohio State’s College of Engineering.
“We can identify clinical situations in cancer for which engineering solutions might be relevant,” he explains. “For instance, Ohio State has one of the best electron microscopy (EM) units in the world, so the opportunity to develop programs in ultrastructure (cryo-EM) is one example of a program that would fall under the broad rubric of cancer engineering.”
Other areas of potential engineering application, he says, include a nano delivery system for topical application of drugs (bio-mechanics), liquid biopsy, molecular imaging, tissue-engineered tumor models, and personalized drug delivery.
Pollock says planning also has begun for two additional endeavors within the OSUCCC – James: a cancer prevention center and a center for oncogeriatrics.
“These are more theoretical at this point, but we are identifying faculty who might be interested in working in these two areas, both of which we’ll pursue with more vigor in 2020 and beyond,” he explains.
A prevention center, he adds, “would build on our strengths in cancer-prevention activities,” including the cancer program’s national leadership roles in examining cancer disparities and improving cancer screening among underserved populations, as well as its strong smoking-cessation efforts as manifested in a federally funded Center of Excellence in Regulatory Tobacco Science.
And developing a program in oncogeriatrics, Pollock states, would be “very useful to many of our patients, particularly people like myself who are in the later decades of life.”
“We know that the elderly process therapies differently than younger individuals, yet we don’t know much about how this happens,” he says. “If you look at the age distribution of cancers, they tend to disproportionately affect older people, which points to the possibility that epigenetics and epigenetic-targeted therapies for the elderly may be important as an additional focus of oncogeriatrics.
“Looking at the underlying genetics of how people process responses to drugs and at how chemoresistance develops is another aspect of this process. Do we need different dosing to accomplish the same therapeutic objectives as a function of a patient’s age? Understanding this would have tremendous implications for treatment and survival.”
Considering initiatives such as these and others, both at Ohio State and elsewhere, Pollock is optimistic about the future of collaborative cancer research and the expanding role that the OSUCCC – James will play in treating and curing this disease in its many forms.
“I’ve been fortunate in my own professional lifetime to have witnessed a number of incredible breakthroughs, such as germ cell tumors going from uniformly lethal to being cured in a majority of patients, remarkable improvements in treating patients with gastrointestinal-stromal tumors (GIST), and the evolving use of targeted therapy drugs such as ibrutinib, rather than highly toxic chemotherapies, to treat CLL patients with promising results and fewer side effects,” he says.
“These are the types of changes we live for in oncology, and while none of them represent silver bullets that imply 100% cure of a given disease, the progress has been very definite across the board,” Pollock adds. “If you look at American Cancer Society five-year survival rates from 1950 compared to 2010, for example, they have increased two and a half-fold for all comers, all stages, all cancers — an improvement that’s ultimately based on research.
“So as long as the United States and other nations retain our societal interest in cancer research, I’m very confident we will continue to make strides toward a cancer-free world. That may not come about in my lifetime, but I believe it will happen eventually.”