CDMRP Investigator Vignette

The Ovarian Cancer Academy: Training a New Generation

Michael Seiden, MD, PhD; Fox Chase Cancer Center
Patricia Donahoe, MD; Massachusetts General Hospital
Ronald Alvarez, MD; University of Alabama at Birmingham
Panos Konstantinopoulos, MD, PhD; Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
Rugang Zhang, PhD; The Wistar Institute

Seiden: A few years ago, consumers successfully worked with our representatives in the DoD to increase the funding for the OCRP, and that really provided a unique opportunity to expand the breadth of ovarian cancer researchers.

Donahoe: The Ovarian Cancer Research Program established an academy for young investigators who were finishing their postdoctoral training and moving into becoming instructors and assistant professors in academic centers.

Seiden: And one of the things that is always very challenging is the first 5 years of an independent investigator's career. So the academy provided a significant amount of funding for these junior investigators, but it did a couple of other things. First of all, it required that the mentees co-submit a grant with the mentor. And the grant also provided money for the mentor so that the mentor really understood that he or she was absolutely responsible for the success of this mentee.

Alvarez: We tried to provide guidance about the scientific direction that the mentee is actually pursuing, to give them some encouragement with respect to the presentation of their results in both abstract forms and help them with their publications and trying to edit those publications. And then, try to give them advice as they seek out independent funding. And generally to be a great cheerleader to the individual who invariably will have some setbacks and discouragements in the entire process as research goes in many different areas.

Donahoe: Currently, there are seven young investigators paired with seven mentors.

Konstantinopoulos: I've been privileged to have as mentor Dr. Stephen Cannistra who is professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and he is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Medical Oncology. He has helped me both in terms of professionally, in terms of promotion, by giving me the opportunity to think novel concepts and novel ideas, as well as form collaborations with other people. He's also been extremely helpful in terms of formulating the grant, submitting new grant applications. So I think it is a great privilege to have him as a mentor.

Alvarez: I'm very pleased to be able to mentor Dr. Chip Landon. He has an interest in ovarian cancer stem cells and is trying to identify that group of cells that persist in patients that may ultimately develop recurrent tumors, and why those cells become so resistant to chemotherapy.

Donahoe: One of the features of the Academy is to bring the young investigators together and also to bring the mentors together. We meet monthly actually by WebEx.

Zhang: We present in turns and then we get critiqued by other trainees. So by this way we basically-we not only communicate our ideas but also obviously in the process it fosters collaboration.

Donahoe: And one of the most important things is to have these investigators so comfortable with each other that they'll collaborate for the rest of their careers.

Zhang: Now the consequence of this-in fact myself and another trainee Dr. Chip Landon, actually we are collaborating on another grant application for the DoD. So this essentially is one of the examples of a success outcome of this program.

Seiden: We also scheduled workshops to bring the young investigators who were part of the Academy altogether to develop a small peer group, along with their mentors, to talk about things; how do you run your laboratory? How do you put together a good scientific talk? (Good slides, good eye contact, great...) How do you write a competitive grant award? How do you review grants? What are the benchmarks for promotion? How do you successfully interact with collaborators? How do you decide to divide your time between your specific laboratory focus versus reaching out more broadly in the ovarian cancer community? And also to serve as a conduit to introduce or network these young academy members with more senior members of the ovarian cancer research community.

Donahoe: Starting a young investigator early in ovarian cancer is important, and supporting them in this way is important because the disease so far has averted all attempts at solving it from the clinical standpoint. So it's very hard to get a young investigator to say, "I'm going to invest my career in a disease that nobody else has solved before."

Zhang: My specific grant focuses on a particular project which studies a phenomenon called cellular selection. So in other words, how T cells age. So the goal of this research is to try to figure out or explore if you will, whether there is a feasibility to basically instead of kill the ovarian cancer cells, pushes them through the aging process, therefore they cannot continue to grow.

Konstantinopoulos: The focus of my work is understanding the mechanism of platinum as well as PARP inhibitor resistance in ovarian cancer. Some ovarian cancer tumors are particularly sensitive to chemotherapy. And this has to do with the pathway called homologous combination pathway, and understanding how certain cells become/are so sensitive to chemotherapy through that pathway is what I'm working on. And also identifying how at some point these cells become resistant to these drugs and identifying novel drugs that can counteract this development of resistance.

Alvarez: I think this investment is going to pay off big time as we see these young people mature and their research advance, hopefully make some promising new discoveries in ovarian cancer that we can utilize to help the patients that we care for who are affected by this disease.

Seiden: I believe it has served as a way of identifying what I believe will eventually be you know the All Stars, the sort of young professors of the ovarian cancer community say 10 years from now.