Hollings Annual Report 2023 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 21
Collaborative work across
institutions leads to new drug
When Jacqueline Kraveka, D.O., learned that 14 years of
painstaking work had finally resulted in Food and Drug
Administration approval of a drug to prevent relapse in
high-risk neuroblastoma patients, one of the first things she
did was to text the news to a patient’s mom.
The patient wasn’t yet 2 years old when she came under
Kraveka’s care for neuroblastoma, a cancer of nerve tissues
that’s most common in children under
the age of 5. The little girl participated in
the clinical trial that led to the December
2023 FDA approval of eflornithine,
or DFMO, and is now, at age 8, doing
well — “fantastic” in fact, Kraveka said.
It’s an outcome she hopes for all patients with high-risk
neuroblastoma, an aggressive tumor with poor outcomes.
Kraveka treats patients at MUSC Children’s Health and
conducts research as part of MUSC Hollings Cancer
Center. She’s also been deeply involved in The Beat
Childhood Cancer Research Consortium since the group’s
inception.
Ho heads efforts to embed
precision oncology in care
As the number of cancer treatments focused on very
specific subsets of patients increases, physicians are faced
with an array of choices. Some treatments target specific
mutations; others are available only after a
patient has tried other therapies first.
To help physicians within the MUSC
Health system and the Hollings Cancer
Network — and, eventually, any
oncologist in South Carolina — MUSC
Hollings Cancer Center recruited Thai Ho, M.D., Ph.D., to
lead the development of the Precision Oncology Program
and add elements of precision oncology to existing tumor
boards.
He holds the Blatt-Ness Distinguished Endowed Chair in
Cancer Research.
Today, it’s a network of more than 50 hospitals that
collaborate on pediatric cancer research and clinical trials,
but it was a small group of determined researchers when
it began, Kraveka said. She sits on both the executive
committee and the scientific committee and was part of
the core team that designed the clinical trials and helped to
shepherd the drug through the approval process.
“I’m really humbled and just thrilled to have been part of
this group and really be involved from the very beginning,”
she said.
Celebrating 30 Years
As a physician-scientist, Ho has a foot in both aspects of
the cancer world. He treats patients with genitourinary
cancers, like kidney, bladder, upper tract urothelial and
prostate cancer, and he runs a lab where he focuses on
researching a mutation in the gene SETD2 that occurs in
kidney cancer.
Ho’s interest in the driving genetic forces behind cancer
coupled with his experience in individualized medicine
make him an ideal fit to lead the growth of precision
oncology at Hollings. He’s also interested in expanding
genetic screening to be more inclusive. “The challenge
with all our cancer genomes and databases is that these are
often from a Caucasian population, and that’s not reflective
of the diversity that we have in America or South Carolina,”
he said.
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