SPORE Grant Will Boost Thyroid Cancer Research
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has awarded a five-year, $11.3 million Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) grant that will help a multidisciplinary team of researchers led by the OSUCCC – James improve the lives of patients with thyroid cancer.
The prestigious SPORE grant, which also involves researchers at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, will support four interactive projects that collectively will seek to identify genetically at-risk individuals and thus allow for early diagnosis and prediction of tumor behavior, development of approaches to minimize side effects of treatments, and development of better biomarkers and treatment options for metastatic disease.
“Several factors support the importance of applying these efforts to thyroid cancer,” says SPORE Principal Investigator (PI) Matthew Ringel, MD, co-director of the Thyroid Cancer Unit at the OSUCCC – James, where he is a member of the Molecular Biology and Cancer Genetics (MBCG) Program. “Incidence of this disease is rising at the fastest rate of all cancers in the United States and worldwide; it is now the fifth most common malignancy in women and 11th most common in men.”
OSUCCC – James Achieves Prestigious Magnet® Designation
Following countless hours of work and dedication by nurses, faculty and staff over the past few years, Ohio State’s James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute has achieved the highly prestigious Magnet® designation from the American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC).
Only 392 hospitals out of more than 6,000 across the United States have earned Magnet status. The Magnet Recognition Program® recognizes health care organizations for quality patient care, nursing excellence and innovations in professional nursing practice. Consumers widely view Magnet status as the ultimate credential for quality nursing.
Magnet Recognition will remain in effect for four years and can be renewed if the hospital reapplies and continues to demonstrate performance according to quality benchmarks and reporting.
OSUCCC – James Research Contributes to FDA Approval of Ibrutinib for Treating Mantle Cell Lymphoma Patients
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Nov. 13 granted accelerated approval to a targeted agent called ibrutinib (Imbruvica™) for treating patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) who have received at least one previous therapy.
The FDA based its approval on promising results from a multi-institutional, single-arm, phase II clinical trial co-led by Kristie Blum, MD, of the OSUCCC – James, in which 111 patients with previously treated MCL who took ibrutinib as an orally administered medication showed an overall response rate of 68 percent, with 21 percent of patients achieving a complete response and 47 percent achieving a partial response. The median response duration was 17.5 months.
Blum, an associate professor in the Division of Hematology at Ohio State and head of the OSUCCC – James lymphoma program, was senior author of an article on the study results published last summer in the New England Journal of Medicine.