Together for Tomorrow: Tackling Childhood Cancer

In this episode, we get insights from three guests - Dr. Brigitte Widemann, Chief of the Pediatric Oncology Branch (POB) and Special Advisor to the NCI Director for Childhood Cancer, Dr. Andrea Gross, an Assistant Research Physician, and Sneh Patel, a Postbac Fellow in the Pediatric Oncology Branch within NCI’s Center for Cancer Research. They share their perspectives on the unique challenges faced in treating pediatric cancers and why research on pediatric oncology is crucial for the overall treatment of the patient. They also emphasize the importance of collaboration and the role of patients and advocacy groups. They also share their career journey and advice for aspiring physician-scientists, and much more!

Show Notes:

· Brigitte C. Widemann, M.D. (ccr.cancer.gov/staff-director...)
· Andrea M. Gross, M.D. (ccr.cancer.gov/staff-director...)
· Sneh Patel ( / snehpatel86 )
· NCI Pediatric Oncology Branch (ccr.cancer.gov/pediatric-onco...) (POB)
· NIH Clinical Center (clinicalcenter.nih.gov/)
· My Pediatric and Adult Rare Tumor (MyPART) Network (www.cancer.gov/pediatric-adul...)
· Cancer Moonshot (www.cancer.gov/research/key-i...)
· Childhood Cancer Data Initiative (CCDI) (www.cancer.gov/research/areas...)

Ad: NCI Rising Scholars: Cancer Research Seminar Series (events.cancer.gov/cct/risings...)

Your Turn Recommendations
· Ologies: Ask Smart People Stupid Questions (open.spotify.com/episode/0Ol7...)
· The Anatomy of Hope: How People Prevail in the Face of Illness by Dr. Jerome Groopman (www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Hope-P...)
· OncoDaily.com (oncodaily.com/)

TRANSCRIPT
Oliver Bogler
Hello and welcome to Inside Cancer Careers, a podcast from the National Cancer Institute, where we explore all the different ways people fight cancer and hear their stories. I'm your host, Oliver Bogler from NCI's Center for Cancer Training. Today, we're talking about research on pediatric cancers and about combining medicine and research to make advances against these devastating diseases. Listen through to the end of the show to hear our guests make some interesting recommendations and where we invite you to take your turn.

So it's my pleasure to welcome Dr. Brigitte Widemann, Chief of the Pediatric Oncology Branch in the Center for Cancer Research at the National Cancer Institute. She's also the head of the Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics Section and serves as special advisor to the NCI Director for Childhood Cancer. Welcome.

Brigitte Widemann
Thank you. It's great to be here.

Oliver Bogler
I'm also very excited to welcome two members of Dr. Wiedemann's research team, Dr. Andrea Gross, former heme/onc fellow, now assistant research physician in the Pediatric Oncology Branch. Welcome.

Andrea Gross
Thank you.

Oliver Bogler
And Sneh Patel, who is currently doing a post-bac and is also on the research team in pediatric oncology. Welcome.

Sneh Patel
Thank you for having me.

Oliver Bogler
Dr. Widemann. Brigitte, what are some of the unique challenges in treating pediatric cancers compared to adult cancers and how does your team address these challenges?

Brigitte Widemann
Thank you. I think the challenges are multiple -fold, but we also have made a lot of progress. One of the challenges is it's a very small patient population. It's about 1% of adult cancers. There are only around 15,000 or so cancers that occur in children and adolescents per year. Biologically, cancers in children are very different from adult cancers, but pharmaceutical companies focus on the common cancers and that makes drug development and new clinical trial sometimes very, very difficult. There are many different types of pediatric cancers, some where the progress has been tremendous and we have very high cure rates, but others where unfortunately the progress has been really lagging for the last two or three decades even, and in particular for pediatric and young adult cancer patients that have metastatic disease that has spread or that have disease that has come back after frontline treatment.
At the NIH, we work in a space where we focus on areas that may not be done by the big cooperative groups. We want to complement and synergize, and we very much build on developing intramural - extramural collaborations. And the last point I want to make, we have the wonderful NIH Clinical Center where we can bring patients from anywhere in the world. And that has been a very unique resource to study some of the very rare can...