Health Science Center researcher wins $900,000 grant to find immune-based cure for ovarian cancer

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Tyler Curiel, M.D., M.P.H.
Tyler Curiel, M.D., M.P.H., an oncologist and internationally recognized immunologist at the Health Science Center’s Cancer Therapy & Research Center.

SAN ANTONIO (January 31, 2014) – Ovarian cancer is the deadliest of all gynecological cancers, often difficult to detect and tough to cure in the later stages. It stimulates strong anti-cancer immunity in the body, and yet the body’s immune system is not able to eliminate the cancer because the cancer turns the immunity off.

But a researcher at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio wants to find out how to turn the body’s own defenses back on to fight ovarian cancer, and has received a $900,000 grant from the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation to do so.

Tyler Curiel, M.D., M.P.H., an oncologist and internationally recognized immunologist at the Health Science Center’s Cancer Therapy & Research Center, has long focused on this puzzle, and has clinically tested promising therapies that could be highly effective. Standard ovarian cancer treatment combines several approaches, but most immune therapy trials, including his group’s early work, only test one immune treatment at a time.

“As we understand better the immune impediments in ovarian cancer, we can develop a program to combine our most successful approaches,” Dr. Curiel said. “We expect to produce better clinical outcomes while limiting toxicities.”

Dr. Curiel and his team plan to develop effective multi-modal immune therapy for ovarian cancer using approaches in three key areas: reducing immune impediments to ovarian cancer immunotherapy, blocking the molecular mechanisms that drive tumor growth and inhibit anti-tumor immunity, and using new generation adoptive T cell transfers.

“This work will allow development of a major grant from the National Cancer Institute to take these therapies to clinical trials, first in resistant cancers and later in relapse prevention and as treatment after failure of front-line therapy,” Dr. Curiel said. This same approach could also be used to treat several additional cancers, since many use the same strategies that ovarian cancer uses to turn immunity off. “This immunotherapy can be safe, tolerable, effective, quickly translated, applied to a variety of cancers and affordable.”

 

The Cancer Therapy & Research Center (CTRC) at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio is one of the elite academic cancer centers in the country to be named a National Cancer Institute (NCI) Designated Cancer Center, and is one of only four in Texas. A leader in developing new drugs to treat cancer, the CTRC Institute for Drug Development (IDD) conducts one of the largest oncology Phase I clinical drug programs in the world, and participates in development of cancer drugs approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. For more information, visit www.ctrc.net.

Poverty simulation offers powerful lesson

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School of Nursing hosting multidisciplinary learning activity to show health care providers harsh realities of poverty

WHAT:

The School of Nursing at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio is hosting its first multidisciplinary poverty simulation. Medical, dental and nursing students from the Health Science Center will join social work students from The University of Texas at San Antonio for this life-changing experience.

During the simulation, students will learn the realities of life for their patients who live with the constant stress of poverty.

Participants role play the lives of low-income families. A student may be a single parent trying to care for his or her children, or a senior citizen with failing health trying to live on social security. Each family must use their nominal income to pay for housing, food and other necessities. The students learn how their patients must interact with various community resources in order to get assistance. They will learn the obstacles the underserved have to attaining health care.

The first 1½ hours is the role playing of a month in the life of someone experiencing poverty, and the second 1½ hours includes a de-briefing when participants review the experience, including how it made them feel and what happened to them during the “month.”

Eight zip codes in San Antonio have more than 50 percent of residents living below the poverty line. Thirty-one percent of San Antonio children live below the poverty line according to 2011 census data.

WHO:

Facilitators of the poverty simulation from the Department of Family & Community Health Systems in the School of Nursing are Marion Donohoe, D.N.P., APRN, CPNP-BC, assistant professor; Martha Martinez, M.S.N., RN, clinical assistant professor; and Adelita Cantu, Ph.D., RN, assistant professor. Teri Boese, M.S.N., RN, director of the Center for Simulation Innovation, also serves as a facilitator of the poverty simulation.

WHEN:

1 to 4 p.m. Monday, Feb. 3, 2014 (NOTE: 1 to 2:30 p.m. has visuals)

WHERE:

Large galleria, second floor, School of Nursing
Media need to come to main entrance at the corner of Floyd Curl and Medical.
Guard at entry will direct media to special parking near event.

 

The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, one of the country’s leading health sciences universities, ranks in the top 3 percent of all institutions worldwide receiving National Institutes of Health funding. The university’s schools of medicine, nursing, dentistry, health professions and graduate biomedical sciences have produced more than 29,000 graduates. The $765 million operating budget supports eight campuses in San Antonio, Laredo, Harlingen and Edinburg. For more information on the many ways “We make lives better®,” visit www.uthscsa.edu.

San Antonio physician assistant earns emergency medicine specialty credential

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SAN ANTONIO (Jan. 30, 2014) – Ryan Bierle, PA-C, a physician assistant at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio, is one of only 108 certified physician assistants nationally to recently earn a specialty credential called a Certificate of Added Qualifications (CAQ) from the National Commission on Certification of Physician Assistants (NCCPA).

Bierle earned a Certificate of Added Qualifications in Emergency Medicine. This credential is earned by meeting licensure, education and experience requirements and then passing an exam. He is one of only 36 certified PAs in Texas and 530 PAs nationally to earn a CAQ since the program’s inception in 2011.

James Cannon, D.H.A., PA-C, NCCPA board chairman, said the demand for certified PAs in the era of health care reform is skyrocketing.

“The CAQ validates, in an objective way, a certified PA’s understanding and experience in a specialty area. It is good news for the public as these PAs are doing over and above what is required for state licensure by earning this valuable credential. It is also good news for physician specialists who are likely to appreciate PAs who go the extra mile to expand their skills, adding value to the practice with a clinician who holds both primary care and specialty certificates,” Cannon said.

Bruce Adams, M.D., chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine, said, “We are very proud of PA Ryan Bierle’s accomplishment. Dedicated physician assistants like Ryan have served and will continue to serve a key and integral role in emergency medicine since the beginning of our specialty, most especially here at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio.”

According to the NCCPA, certified PAs are licensed and certified health care professionals who practice medicine with physician supervision. They bring a breadth of knowledge and skills to patient care. Though their role in any particular workplace is determined in consultation with the supervising physician, certified PAs can take histories, conduct physical exams, diagnose and treat illnesses, order and interpret tests, counsel on preventative health care, assist in surgery, perform a variety of procedures and write prescriptions.

For more information about certified PAs or the CAQ program, visit www.nccpa.net. To learn more about the physician assistant program at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio, call 210-567-6220 or toll-free 866-802-6288 or email shpwelcome@uthscsa.edu.

 

The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, one of the country’s leading health sciences universities, ranks in the top 3 percent of all institutions worldwide receiving National Institutes of Health funding. The university’s schools of medicine, nursing, dentistry, health professions and graduate biomedical sciences have produced more than 29,000 graduates. The $765 million operating budget supports eight campuses in San Antonio, Laredo, Harlingen and Edinburg. For more information on the many ways “We make lives better®,” visit www.uthscsa.edu.

Low levels of pro-inflammatory agent help cognition in rats

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Jennifer Donegan
Jennifer Donegan, graduate student at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

SAN ANTONIO (Jan. 28, 2014) — Although inflammation is frequently a cause of disease in the body, research from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio indicates that low levels of a pro-inflammatory cytokine in the brain are important for cognition. Cytokines are proteins produced by the immune system.

Jennifer Donegan, graduate student, and David Morilak, Ph.D., professor of pharmacology in the School of Medicine, found that neutralizing the cytokine interleukin-6 in the brain impaired reversal learning in both stressed and nonstressed rats. Reversal learning is a form of cognitive flexibility that is diminished in psychiatric diseases such as depression, schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder. Cognitive flexibility is the ability to change previously learned thoughts and behaviors in response to changes in the environment.

“When we started the project, we thought cognitive flexibility would be impaired by stress-induced inflammation in a region of the brain called the prefrontal cortex,” Donegan said. “We decided to block interleukin-6 during stress to prevent the cognitive deficit, and to our surprise this made things worse. This suggested that it may actually be beneficial to maintain a low level of this pro-inflammatory cytokine in the brain.”

As a key next step, the scientists were then able to fix the cognitive deficit caused by stress by restoring a low level of the cytokine specifically in the prefrontal cortex. Both scientists caution, however, that there is still much to learn about interleukin-6’s role in cognition and in diseases like depression. “We’ve replicated just one piece of a very complex disease so we can understand the biology,” Dr. Morilak said. “We found that, in one brain region, one cytokine facilitates cognitive flexibility and is beneficial after chronic stress. But we delivered the cytokine specifically into that brain region using a virus, which we cannot do in people. And its role in inflammation may be very different than in normal conditions. There’s still a lot of work to do.”

Donegan is on track to receive her Ph.D. later this year. She is lead author and Dr. Morilak is senior author of the study, published this month in the Journal of Neuroscience. The research is funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation.

 

The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, one of the country’s leading health sciences universities, ranks in the top 3 percent of all institutions worldwide receiving National Institutes of Health funding. The university’s schools of medicine, nursing, dentistry, health professions and graduate biomedical sciences have produced more than 29,000 graduates. The $765 million operating budget supports eight campuses in San Antonio, Laredo, Harlingen and Edinburg. For more information on the many ways “We make lives better®,” visit www.uthscsa.edu.

CTRC researcher part of multi-team European cancer project

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SAN ANTONIO (January 15, 2014) – A CTRC researcher has won a grant to be part of an ambitious multi-million-dollar international program to develop a new drug that could potentially be used to fight many different cancers.

Tyler Curiel, M.D., M.P.H., an internationally known cancer immunologist at the Cancer Therapy & Research Center at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and professor in the School of Medicine there, is part of the TumAdoR project. The project grants $8 million among the researchers over four years to develop an antibody that will block a specific cancer metabolic pathway and reduce its ability to suppress the immune system. The objective is to have the antibody developed and ready for clinical trials at the end of the grant period.

“It can take decades to be in a clinical trial with a new concept and we’re trying to do it in four years,” Dr. Curiel said. “I think we’ve got a pretty good shot.”

Dr. Curiel is the leader for TumAdoR Project 6, funded at $800,000. His team’s mission is to develop mice with human immune systems and other models and additional tests to be sure that the developed antibody can block the metabolic pathway, and to assess what the immune consequences will be in humans.

The TumAdoR project weaves together the skills of seven different teams from Germany, Switzerland, France, Finland and the UT Health Science Center to attack the problem from multiple perspectives such as immunology, drug development, and clinical trial design and management.

Its target is CD73, an enzyme that is overexpressed in many different kinds of cancer. CD73 helps produce excess amounts of adenosine, which is needed to produce energy in cells, but also can suppress the immune system and allow the tumor cells to reproduce.

Adenosine is not normally immune-suppressive, “but it is when you generate lots of it, as tumors do. Tumors do everything in a crazy way,” Dr. Curiel said.

Antibody therapy is already a proven success — one example is Herceptin, an antibody drug used to treat breast cancer — but the promising thing about this project is that the drug may well work against several types of cancer.

Bin Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., a former CTRC researcher who developed critical CD73 data, now at Northwestern University, remains a part of the Curiel team collaborating on Project 6. Christophe Caux, PhD, at the Léon Bérard Cancer Center in Lyon, France is principal investigator.

The TumAdoR project receives funding from the European Union’s 7th Research Framework Programme (FP7). For more information, click here.

 

The Cancer Therapy & Research Center (CTRC) at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio is one of the elite academic cancer centers in the country to be named a National Cancer Institute (NCI) Designated Cancer Center, and is one of only four in Texas. A leader in developing new drugs to treat cancer, the CTRC Institute for Drug Development (IDD) conducts one of the largest oncology Phase I clinical drug programs in the world, and participates in development of cancer drugs approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. For more information, visit www.ctrc.net.

Doctor of Nursing Practice Program earns maximum five-year accreditation

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New D.N.P. degree earns perfect review visit

The Board of Commissioners for the Commission of Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE) has granted accreditation to the School of Nursing at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio for the Doctor of Nursing Practice Program (D.N.P.). The CCNE board determined that the program met all four accreditation standards. The accreditation, retroactively effective as of March 23, 2013, is for a five-year term, which is the maximum number of years possible.

Ilene Decker, Ph.D., R.N., associate dean for academic affairs, said CCNE evaluators visited campus on March 23-24, 2013. The accreditation team met with faculty, students, Nurse Advisory Council members, and partners in the community.

“Site visitors make sure that what we wrote in our D.N.P. Self Study Report is exactly what we are doing. They determine if we are meeting all the standards we set up when we created the degree,” she said. “After meeting with everyone on campus, they reported no compliance concerns with respect to key elements. In other words, we had a perfect visit. This means we have a program that prepares high-quality professionals.”

Gemma Kennedy, Ph.D., R.N., director of the D.N.P. program, explained that the program is a practice-focused doctoral program. The mission of this program is to prepare expert nurse clinicians, administrators and executive leaders to improve health and health care outcomes through evidence-based practice in diverse clinical, health care, and academic settings.

The degree addresses the increasingly complex health care system that requires advanced practice nurses to understand leadership, policy, economics and quality and safety issues; to apply and translate research into practice; and to be leaders of multidisciplinary practice teams.

The D.N.P. program offers three post-master’s leadership tracks: Nurse Practitioner Leadership, Executive Administrative Management and Public Health Nurse Leader. Completion of the program can take two to three years, depending on the track chosen, with part-time and full-time study options.

The program’s blended curriculum of online courses and classroom sessions is flexible and accommodates the busy schedules of working professionals. New students are admitted every fall. Currently there are 27 students in the program. Five students graduated from the program in 2013. For more information about the degree, call 210-567-5805 or email SONAdmission@uthscsa.edu.

 

The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, one of the country’s leading health sciences universities, ranks in the top 3 percent of all institutions worldwide receiving National Institutes of Health funding. The university’s schools of medicine, nursing, dentistry, health professions and graduate biomedical sciences have produced more than 29,000 graduates. The $765 million operating budget supports eight campuses in San Antonio, Laredo, Harlingen and Edinburg. For more information on the many ways “We make lives better®,” visit www.uthscsa.edu.