Stony Brook Medicine in Collaboration with Brookhaven National Laboratory
| Dr. Joseph Kim and Dr. Cathy S. Cutler |
Gastric (stomach) cancer is a devastating condition with mostly poor survival. It is the second most common cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. About 28,000 people in the United States are told every year they have this cancer, according to the American Cancer Society.
Major advances in personalized therapies including monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) have improved survival for many cancers, but the benefits remain marginal for gastric cancer.
One gap in treatment is that effective mAbs for gastric cancer may already exist in clinical practice, but have yet to be tested in gastric cancer. However, it would take exorbitant costs to test all of these drugs in gastric cancer.
The second gap in treatment is that the efficacy of a gastric cancer therapy may be unique only to select patients.
The essence of personalized medicine: taking a patient’s tumor … and
testing drugs to see which one would be most effective for that individual patient.
Joseph Kim, MD, associate professor of surgery and member of our Surgical Oncology Division, and Cathy S. Cutler, PhD, director of the Medical Isotope Research and Production Program at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), have teamed up to conduct a research project titled "Development of Radiolabeled Drugs to Study Novel Gastric Cancer Models."
Their project — funded by a Stony Brook–BNL seed grant awarded in June — aims to establish an accurate and expeditious diagnostic platform that provides data to make actionable clinical decisions on mAbs for gastric cancer.
To this end, they will build upon their prior work and develop gastric cancer organoids for gastric cancer patients and use radiolabeled antibodies to select optimal therapeutic drugs.
Dr. Kim explains, "Our study is the essence of personalized medicine: taking a patient's tumor, creating a cancer model, and testing drugs to see which one would be most effective for that individual patient."
The Stony Brook–BNL seed grant program serves to foster collaborative efforts between scientists at the university and BNL. It is a key element for developing synergistic activities that can grow joint research programs that are aligned with the strategic plans of both institutions.
The program was started in 1999. Scientists from both institutions work in conjunction with colleagues to bring their ideas to life. The collaboration of Drs. Kim and Cutler capitalizes on the clinical and translational science expertise of Stony Brook Medicine and BNL.
| What is a monoclonal antibody? Simply put, in clinical practice, it is a drug that targets a specific protein. It circulates throughout the body until it can find and hook onto the target protein. Oncologists generally use it as a homing device to take a chemotherapy agent or a radioactive particle directly to cancer cells. In recent decades, the use of different types of mAbs in various ways has helped to advance cancer care. |
Learn more about gastric cancer from the American Cancer Society, as well as about monoclonal antibodies to treat cancer. For consultations/appointments with Dr. Kim, please call 631-444-8086.
