New Initiatives at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center
The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center (OSUCCC) is continually developing new programs, collaborations and centers of excellence to help create a cancer-free world.
“We want to identify areas where we can leverage our strengths in ways that can’t be done elsewhere to develop new programs where we can have a true impact on the cancer problem,” says Raphael Pollock, MD, PhD, director of the OSUCCC.
Listen as Dr. Pollock shares more info on OSUCCC – James research on our Cancer-Free World Podcast.
The Pelotonia Institute for Immuno-Oncology
In July 2019, Pelotonia announced a $102 million pledge to The James, with $65 million of that pledge designated to the newly-formed Pelotonia Institue for Immuno-Oncology.
"We were very fortunate to recruit Dr. Zihai Li as the founding director of the institute,” Pollock says. “He was clearly the most qualified person to lead the institute.”
The donation from Pelotonia, the annual fundraising bike ride that has raised more than $200 million for cancer research at the OSUCCC – James, will be crucial to the success of the PIIO. “To fully establish the institute, we need to recruit 30 to 35 new faculty members and scientists, and the Pelotonia commitment will make this possible,” Pollock says. “Recruiting is one of the areas where Dr. Li is truly exceptional, and he’s already put together a roster of extremely talented candidates — about two-thirds are very senior, well-established and well-funded by the National Cancer Institute, and the remaining third are extremely talented entry-level faculty and researchers.”
Center for Cancer Engineering
The OSUCCC and The Ohio State University College of Engineering have joined forces to create this new center. They have already teamed up to purchase and utilize cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) that provides cancer researchers with the most advanced high-resolution imaging.
Another collaboration will be the development of a new, less invasive biopsy procedure. Currently, there are two biopsy options: an operation or a needle biopsy. “I’m a surgical oncologist and specialize in sarcomas,” Pollock says, adding that these tumors are often “in the deepest recesses of the abdomen.” This makes each of the two current biopsy options difficult, invasive and costly.
“We are looking at a way to take a blood sample, and through a filtration process, we can isolate the components within the blood to diagnose a tumor deep within the body,” Pollock explains. “If successful, we can isolate the biomarkers and come to the same understanding of a patient’s cancer as we now can from an open-operation biopsy and an image-directed needle biopsy.”
Cancer Prevention and Survivorship
One of the OSUCCC’s areas of focus features a collaboration with Columbus’ Nationwide Children’s Hospital that involves patients who were initially and successfully treated as children but often have wide ranges of socio-economic problems as adults. “We don’t fully understand why, and the extent in which their genomics contribute to this, but we are aware that younger cancer survivors require an additional level of care for the problems that emerge in the aftermath of their successful treatment,” Pollock says.
Cancer prevention is another major goal of OSUCCC research.
“We will harness the strengths we have, such as our lab investigations, looking at the interaction between environmental factors and how this impacts a patient’s genomic structure and contributes to the development of cancer,” Pollock says. “Plus, we are an international leader in smoking cessation and research on the impact of tobacco on human health and cancer. Bringing all these areas together, under one administrative structure, makes a lot of sense to us.”