Joseph Avruch, M.D., Ph.D., a Harvard Medical School professor of medicine in the Department of Molecular Biology, will speak Thursday, Sept. 21, at the WSU School of Medicine's ninth-annual Graduate Student Research Day. Dr. Avruch is internationally recognized for a series of discoveries that have enabled an understanding of how insulin, related growth factors and insulin antagonists control cell function.

Since 1979, Dr. Avruch has served as chief of the Diabetes Unit at Massachussetts General Hospital. He is director of the National Institutes of Health-sponsored Boston Area Diabetes and Endocrinology Research Center . He is also a member of the Board of Scientific Councilors of the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Dr. Avruch directs a vigorous ongoing program of laboratory-based research and is the author of more than 120 peer-reviewd articles. In 2003, he was named “Most Highly Cited” in biology and biochemistry by the Institute for Scientific Information. He remains active in clinical care and teaching.

Each year, Graduate Student Research Day is held to provide young researchers the opportunity to showcase their research efforts with oral and poster presentations in Scott Hall. For more information about this event, please contact Carri Glide at cglide@med.wayne.edu or (313) 576-8313.

Several Wayne State University School of Medicine faculty members have been cited as “Health Care Heroes” by Crain's Detroit Business magazine. The magazine published its choices for exemplary achievement in a number of areas in health care in the Monday, Sept. 4 edition.

Cited as a Health Care Hero for outstanding physician achievement was Dr. Micheal Trese, clinical professor of ophthalmology and chief of pediatric and adult vitreoretinal surgery at Beaumont Hospitals. Dr. Susan Hendrix, professor of obstetrics and gynecology, was given an honorable mention in the outstanding physician achievement category for her work as principal investigator of the NIH-funded Women's Health Initiative.

Dr. Seetha Shankaran, professor of pediatrics, received an honorable mention in the category of advancement in health care. Dr. Shankaran's recently published study showed that cooling oxygen-deprived newborns' body temperatures just after birth reduces the risk of death or disabilities in these infants.

Interim Chair of Internal Medicine Dr. John Flack, who was named a Crain's Health Care Hero last year, participated on the Crain's panel of judges.

 

In a series of recently published papers, Gilda Hillman, Ph.D., WSU School of Medicine associate professor of radiation oncology at the Karmanos Cancer Institute, has shown that under certain conditions, soy makes prostate cancer cells more sensitive to radiation therapy. Dr. Hillman, along with other colleages at the School of Medicine , is part of a growing movement of scientists investigating how dietary factors might improve the treatment of cancer.   

Researchers, including Hillman, are investigating how specific changes such as adding soy, garlic, fish oil or other foods to the diet may make it easier for conventional cancer therapies to target cancer cells, rendering treatment more safe and effective. 

The process of making tumors more susceptible to the effects of therapy is called sensitization .  It appears that specific foods or food components have the potential to make cancer cells more radiosensitive (susceptible to radiation) or chemosensitive (susceptible to chemotherapeutic agents).

Dr. Hillman, who has received funding from the American Institute for Cancer Research, has developed several cellular and animal models to study the interaction of soy and cancer therapy.  Dr. Hillman's work revealed that a combination of soy and radiation therapy is more effective against prostate cancer cells in laboratory experiments than radiation therapy alone. Dr. Hillman began looking at the issue of cancer treatment by studying the radiosensitization effects of genistein, a single soy component.

But when her experiments revealed that under specific conditions, isolated genistein showed a troubling potential to stimulate the spread of tumor cells (metastasis) from prostate tumors to lymph nodes, Dr. Hillman switched to a dried powder of whole soy. She found that whole soy produced the same positive effects of genistein (radiosensitization) without the negative effect on tumor spread.

“It's intriguing that whole soy did not stimulate prostate cancer cells to metastasize while a single soy component did,” said Hillman. “We've confirmed it in different prostate cancer models, we've pinpointed the likely biomolecular mechanism responsible, and we are beginning to incorporate our findings into ongoing clinical trials with prostate cancer patients under rigorously controlled conditions.” Dr. Hillman collaborated on the prostate-cancer studies with Dr. Omer Kucuk, WSU professor of hematology/oncology, and Dr. Jeffrey Forman, WSU professor of radiation oncology.

Initial Findings With Isolated Genistein Aroused Concern

In a paper featured in the July 2006 issue of online scientific journal BMC Cancer , Dr. Hillman and her colleagues report that genistein alone seems to work in vitro by inhibiting a protein called Nuclear Factor Kappa B (NF-?B), which is activated to help cells recover from damage, such as the kind of damage that occurs when cancer cells are exposed to radiation treatment.  (This study provides strong confirmation of previous findings by Dr. Hillman's colleague, Dr. Fazlul Sarkar, WSU professor of pathology.)    

In fact, Hillman and her colleagues determined the optimal dose and timing to maximize this anti-cancer effect in vitro .  Cancer cells exposed to genistein before and after radiation therapy show the strongest likelihood to have their growth arrested during a phase of the life cycle just prior to cell division during which cells are known to be most susceptible to radiation. 

In another paper appearing in the July issue of the journal Radiation Research , Hillman and her colleagues have found that this combination of genistein and radiation therapy is effective against different models of prostate cancer in mice.  Treating established prostate tumors with genistein first, followed by radiation, and finishing up with continuous treatment with genistein, effectively controlled tumor growth. The combination inhibited the growth of prostate tumors and kept cancer from spreading to lymph nodes.

Dr. Hillman found, however, that pairing genistein with radiation therapy was crucial.  In mice that were fed pure genistein alone, without undergoing radiation therapy, the soy phytochemical seemed to increase the rate at which prostate tumors spread to the lymph nodes.  

“The increase in metastatic spread observed with pure genistein given alone concerned us, because we needed to establish that any participants in clinical trials with soy would not be exposed to risks, no matter how small,” she said.

The finding was of particular interest to Dr. Hillman's colleague Dr. Omer Kucuk, who had previously shown that soy components such as genistein could be safely administered for more than 6 months in Phase I clinical trials.

Whole Soy Provides Benefits Without Risks, Study Finds

Dr. Hillman and her colleagues repeated their prostate cancer experiments using soy powder a dried form of whole soy instead of the isolated genistein soy component. They observed that soy exhibited the same anti-cancer effect: it sensitized prostate cancer cells to the effects of radiation by halting cellular growth.

Importantly, feeding whole soy was not associated with the increased metastasis of cancer into the lymph nodes that was observed with genistein, even when whole soy was administered by itself, without radiation treatment. These findings were published earlier this year in the journal Radiotherapy and Oncology and in the Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research.

“This is an important finding with great promise for people undergoing prostate cancer treatment,” said Dr. Hillman. “But this work is just beginning, and it is still too early to make practical recommendations about soy foods and soy supplements to cancer patients.” 

Treatment And Prevention Not the Same  

But Hillman is quick to point out that findings from research on diet during cancer treatment do not speak directly to cancer prevention . 

“With cancer patients, we have a clearly defined and measurable goal get rid of the cancer.  We can quantify the cause and effect relationship between dietary factors and existing tumors under specific sets of conditions, and repeat those experiments to verify our results.”

Because many different but interconnected factors influence cancer risk, and these factors take place over a lifetime, it's more difficult for scientists who study cancer prevention to isolate the effects of specific dietary factors.  In order to arrive at scientific consensus about the prevention of cancer, researchers instead pool many different studies of varying design to find commonalities among population, laboratory, and clinical data.

Promising Research, but Still Preliminary

Dr. Hillman cautioned individuals who are currently undergoing prostate cancer therapy against loading up on soy foods or soy supplements without alerting their oncologists.  More clinical data in human subjects are needed before advice about soy and supplements during treatment can be made, she said.

She noted that participants in clinical trials are only exposed to soy in forms and amounts that are rigidly controlled by researchers, unlike individuals who consume whole soy foods or unregulated, store-bought soy supplements.  “The phytochemical profiles of whole foods vary widely, as do the components of supplements available commercially,” said Hillman.  “That's another reason we can't yet generalize our results to the world at large.” 

Until these ongoing clinical trials are completed, Dr. Hillman said, prostate cancer patients should always keep their doctors fully informed about their diet.  “It's clear that dietary factors can play a very important role perhaps never more important than during cancer treatment,” Hillman said. 

“It's our goal to find ways to make this often painful and debilitating process less toxic, and more effective.”

Two Detroit educational programs that serve area children and teenagers were the thrilled recipients of a welcome gift from the School of Medicine last week. The school donated about 140 microscopes to both the Detroit Science Center and to Vista Maria, a regional residential and education center for abused and delinquent girls.

Rebecca Nielsen, the Science Center 's senior manager of educational programs, was at Scott Hall to accept the donation and take possession of 100 microscopes last Friday, Aug. 25. She said the microscopes will be excellent equipment for use with the center's extensive children's programs, including “Slimy Science” and “Creepy Critters.”

Wendy Kearney, M.S.W., manager of volunteer resources, and Jennifer Blackburn, volunteer coordinator, both from Vista Maria, took possession of 40 microscopes on Friday, as well. The equipment will benefit the school, which service s the 178 14- to17-year-old girls who live at the center recovering from abuse and behavioral disorders.

Executive Dean Robert Frank presented the microscopes. He explained that, with the use of sophisticated technology and virtual learning, microscopes are no longer an important part of the medical curriculum. “I'm very pleased that this equipment will go to good use and help to support these truly worthy community resources,” said Dr. Frank.