October 26-29, 2008
Hyatt Regency Newport
Newport, RI
Celebrating 10 Years of Improving People's Lives Through the Advancement of Clinical Research
From the role of telomeres in cancer to preventing the toll of drug-resistant tuberculosis and malaria in the developing world, scientists funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation are conducting cutting-edge clinical research worldwide. These scientists met in Newport, Rhode Island, from October 26-29 to present their research.
The meeting kicked off with an informal chat, formatted like the Charlie Rose show, between David Nathan, chair of DDCF’s Scientific Advisory Council, and James Wyngaarden, who served as director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the 1980s and as chair of the DDCF’s advisory council between 1998 and 2001.
Prompted by questions from Dr. Nathan, Dr. Wyngaarden described medical research in the 1950s, when one had to be either independently wealthy, or lucky enough to be at one of the handful of institutions with research funding.
David Nathan(L) & James Wyngaarden(R), present and former chairmen, respectively, of the DDCF Scientific Advisory Council.
“It was horrible for patients, labs were messy, animal care was outrageous,” Dr. Wyngaarden recalled. “It was really difficult to do anything.”
For many years, any researcher interested in clinical research could train only at the NIH campus. Then, in the post-war period, the NIH began awarding funds to academic centers to support independent researchers, and the research landscape as it is today began to take shape.
But the golden years of NIH budgets, when Harold Varmus presided over the NIH, have ended, Dr. Nathan noted, and young investigators, in particular, are struggling.
Filling the Pipeline
Since the Medical Research Program’s earliest days, DDCF recognized the need to build the pipeline of physician-scientists and chose to focus its grant-making on supporting outstanding physician-scientists at different stages of their careers.
This year marked the 10th anniversary of the Medical Research Program, which has since 1998 funded over 300 grants, totaling more than $170 million.
Through the program, the foundation grants Clinical Research Fellowships to medical students at 12 universities, Clinical Science Development Awards (CSDA) to junior faculty interested in clinical research, and Distinguished Clinical Scientist Awards (DCSA) to mid-career scientists engaged in translational research.
In special sessions marking the program’s 10th anniversary, researchers at different stages in their careers talked about their DDCF-funded projects.
Michael DeBaun (1999 CSDA), a researcher at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, has shown that silent strokes, which affect one in five children with sickle cell anemia, affect the children’s cognitive abilities and cause them to perform poorly in school.
Michael DeBaun presenting his research.
Beyond the financial support and resources for the research, Dr. DeBaun said, what the DDCF award gave him was “protected time” to work on the project, and the opportunity to meet peers who face similar challenges.
Dr. DeBaun also has two mentees, Allison King at Washington University and John Strouse at Johns Hopkins University, each of whom received CSDAs in 2005.
Later in the session, Margaret Shipp, who received a coveted DCSA award in 2001, discussed her recent research on diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. And Dan Rader described a phase II trial, launched with the help of his 2002 DCSA award, to test a drug that lowers levels of LDL, the so-called ‘bad’ cholesterol.
Funding Innovation
Apart from these awards, the foundation also created a Clinical Interfaces Award Program (CIAP) to foster multidisciplinary and inter-institutional projects.
Emphasizing the foundation’s ongoing interest in fostering innovation, Don Ganem, who together with collaborators Joe DeRisi and Homer Boushey at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), was awarded a CIAP grant in 2003, presented work on their ‘ViroChip’. The ViroChip is an array that carries 22,000 conserved sequences from more than 1,300 viral families, and promises to rapidly detect known and emerging viruses.
Dr. Ganem described one particularly colorful case study, in which the chip was used to identify a mysterious virus that has been killing exotic pet birds for decades. The serendipitous finding occurred when a group of veterinarians from a clinic in Florida specializing in exotic birds (parakeets) sent Dr. Ganem RNA from deceased pet parakeets that contained a novel avian borna virus.
Between 2000 and 2003, the foundation funded two-year pilot grants called Innovation in Clinical Research Awards (ICRA).
David Anderson, a researcher from the Macfarlane Burnet Institute for Medical Research and Public Health in Australia, described the development of a simple ELISA test that analyzes whole blood and estimates the number of CD4 immune cells present from a standard curve. Seed funding from DDCF enabled Dr. Anderson and his colleagues to attract additional philanthropic support, which is leading to the commercialization of a low-cost, point-of-care diagnostic for use in low-resource areas.
In the same session, Avrum Spira, who received a 2002 CSDA, presented his work on a novel biomarker for lung cancer, work he said would have been impossible without the foundation’s support because he had little preliminary evidence to go on.
“It’s hard to imagine anyone whose career or work has been more impacted,” he said.
Mentoring the Next Generation
The effect on young investigators’ careers was also evident in a session dedicated to three ‘generations’ of DDCF grantees. Philip Rosenthal, a 2004 DCSA grantee at UCSF, mentored Grant Dorsey, who went on to win a 2006 CSDA. In turn, Dr. Dorsey, along with Dr. Rosenthal, guided the research of Lisa Bebell, a 2006-2007 Clinical Research Fellow.
From left to right: Philip Rosenthal, Joel Palefsky, Lisa Bebell and Grant Dorsey.
Joel Palefsky, the Program Leader for the Clinical Research Fellows program at UCSF, talked about the critical importance of strong mentorship at every level in the academic pipeline. Engaged in research on malaria and HIV with a base in Uganda, Drs. Rosenthal, Dorsey and Bebell exemplify the foundation’s emphasis on and support for mentorship.
Fittingly, the conference ended with a talk by Barry Bloom, the newest member of DDCF’s Scientific Advisory Council. Dr. Bloom, former Dean of Harvard University’s School of Public Health, focused on tuberculosis, a disease that is sorely neglected by most funding agencies, despite its toll in Africa and the re-emergence of its threat in the United States and Europe.
From the opening clambake to the mentoring breakfast and the tour of Doris Duke’s Newport estate Rough Point on a crisp New England afternoon, the meeting provided crucial opportunities for grantees to get to know one another and exchange ideas.
True to Doris Duke’s will, the Medical Research Program has spent the past 10 years “actively and efficiently promoting medical research designed to effectuate cures of major diseases,” by supporting outstanding physician-scientists engaged in translational research.