Johnathan Lancaster, M.D. is Moffitt's newly appointed Medical Director for the Lifetime Cancer Screening and Prevention Center at Moffitt Cancer Research Center.
Dr. Johnathan Lancaster is the Principal Investigator with Moffitt working with DNAPrint Genomics and Taxanes
Moffit Cancer Research Center - Lifetime Focuses on High-Risk Populations - Summer 2004
The Lifetime Cancer Screening & Prevention Center at Moffitt Cancer Center is heading in new directions – with a new medical director at its helm. Johnathan Lancaster, M.D., has been named medical director for Lifetime Cancer Screening & Prevention Center at Moffitt Cancer Center. He also is a member of the Gynecologic Oncology Program and the Experimental Therapeutics and Risk Assessment, Detection & Intervention Programs.
Dr. Lancaster will lead the directional change that Lifetime is making to focus more on high-risk populations. “We are turning Lifetime into a cancer screening research laboratory,” says Dr. Lancaster. “We are conducting studies that will enhance the art and the science of cancer screening such that we develop more sophisticated, successful, sensitive screening technologies.”
Additionally, Dr. Lancaster is leading the new Familial Breast and Ovarian Cancer Screening and Prevention Clinic at Lifetime. Clinics at Lifetime are concentrating on screening individuals at elevated risk for breast, ovarian, cervical and colon cancers. Clinics serving patients at high risk for skin and genitourinary cancers are planned, in addition to a clinic focused on individuals at increased risk for cancer based on the most common risk factor – age.
Care for individuals at highest risk will be overseen by an interdisciplinary medical team providing comprehensive, coordinated management in a single location. Prospective patients may be referred by their own physicians for genetics testing or can be evaluated individually through a screening process designed to determine predisposition to cancer. The patient may then be managed by the clinic or return to his or her own doctor. In the Familial Breast and Ovarian Cancer Screening and Prevention Clinic, patients at high risk for breast and ovarian cancers are overseen by Dr. Lancaster and Rebecca Sutphen, M.D., director of the Family Cancer Genetics Clinic. Genetic testing is available for mutations in BRCA1/ BRCA2, two genes associated with breast and ovarian cancer, as well as for genes or markers associated with colon cancer.
Patients are seen by genetic counselors, behavioral and psychosocial specialists familiar with high-risk gene carriers, and a nutritionist who conducts a risk assessment analysis and develops and evaluates dietary interventions that may impact risk.
Since family history is a strong indicator to developing breast and ovarian cancer, Dr. Lancaster envisions families attending the clinic – centralizing care for all family members at risk of developing cancer.
Drs. Lancaster and Sutphen also plan to conduct more clinical trials and to develop better screening strategies through their research. They also will co-direct the newly established genetics research laboratory at Lifetime. This laboratory will utilize state-of-the-art technology to examine subtle differences in DNA that may determine such things as whether an individual has a higher risk to develop cancer, may tend to develop cancer at a younger age, or may respond differently to chemotherapy or radiation treatment if cancer develops.
“I see no benefit to simply providing the same services as screening centers across America,” says Dr. Lancaster. “The role of Lifetime is to apply research strategies to develop the science of early detection such that we improve the way we screen patients.”
Clinical Trials Use Microarray Analysis
Dr. Lancaster served as medical director of the Cervix Clinic at Duke University Medical Center before joining Moffitt Cancer Center. While at Duke University, he and his colleagues applied microarray technology to better understand the gene profiles that underlie ovarian cancers. They identified gene expression profiles that differentiate cancers from long- and short-term survivors, patients that would and would not be amenable to optimal surgical debulking and, most interestingly, which cancers responded to specific chemotherapies and which ones did not. Preliminary data from those studies suggest they can accurately predict in 90% of the cases which tumors would respond to specific chemotherapies based on their gene expression profiles.
He currently is developing a translational trial in which he will use microarray analysis to design tailored therapies for individual patients with ovarian cancer. Designer chemotherapy will hopefully increase patient response rates and decrease the number of ineffective agents that the patient receives. “Such individualized treatments decrease unnecessary toxicities, allow patients to receive the most effective anticancer agents more quickly, and preserve bone marrow,” says Dr. Lancaster. “This approach may increase lifespan and, more importantly, should improve patient quality of life.”
Dr. Lancaster’s clinical research interests include the GOG-182, a national multicenter, five-arm, open-trial study, involving the Gynecological Oncology Group, a national and international collaboration of gynecological oncologists. The study evaluates the role of chemotherapeutics traditionally used in recurrent ovarian cancer. The first arm compares surgery followed by carboplatin and taxol to the four other arms, which include surgery, carboplatin, taxol and a salvage agent.
Quick Summary – Dr. Johnathan Lancaster, MD. – Principal Investigator for Moffit on Taxanes Projects with DNAPrint Genomics
* Promotion to Medical Director for Lifetime Cancer Screening & Prevention Center at Moffitt Cancer Center
* Leads the new Familial Breast and Ovarian Cancer Screening and Prevention Clinic at Lifetime
* Ongoing and new research on Carboplatin and Taxol
* Develops and uses MicroArrays for cancer diagnostics and screening
* Works with DNAPrint Genomics as Moffitt's principal investigator with Taxanes
** It appears DNAP is in very good company with Dr. Lancaster now the new Medical Director at Moffitt's Lifetime Cancer Center, working on clinical studies with excellent opportunities for Moffitt and DNAP to develop leading edge cancer screening methods and diagnostic microarrays...
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