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Cancer

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A view of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. File photo

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and the North Shore-LIJ Health System say they are partnering up to align research with clinical services in an effort to treat the health system’s nearly 16,000 cancer cases each year.

The partnership, announced last week, will benefit from more than $120 million investment that will be used to accelerate cancer research, diagnosis and treatment. The money will also be used to develop a new clinical research unit at the North Shore-LIJ Cancer Institute in Lake Success, NY. The unit will support the early clinical research of cancer therapies while also being used to train clinicians in oncology, the branch of medicine that deals with cancer. The source of the investment is not being disclosed.

“This is a transformative affiliation for both institutions, bringing the cutting-edge basic discovery science and translational cancer research at CSHL to one of the largest cancer treatment centers in the United States,” Cold Spring Harbor Lab President and CEO Bruce Stillman said in a press release.

As part of the affiliation, clinician-scientists will also be trained to perform preclinical cancer research and conduct early-stage human clinical trials to help further research.

“Cancer patients at North Shore-LIJ are going to benefit from the world’s leading cancer research centers,” Dagnia Zeidlickis, vice president of communications for Cold Spring Harbor Lab said in a phone interview Monday.

The partnership is just the latest move made by North Shore-LIJ to improve cancer care. Over the past two years, the health system invested more than $175 million to expand cancer treatment centers throughout Long Island and New York City.

Recently, North Shore-LIJ completed an $84 million expansion of the institute’s headquarters in Lake Success. It consolidated all cancer services offered by North Shore University Hospital and Long Island Jewish Medical Center in a state-of-the-art 130,000-square-foot facility, including ambulatory hematology/oncology, chemotherapy and radiation medicine, surgical oncology and brain tumor services, according to a press release.

North Shore-LIJ is also building a new $34 million, 45,500-square-foot outpatient cancer center in Bay Shore and is pursuing other major expansions on Long Island and in Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island and Westchester County.

“Bringing the scientists of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory together with the more than 200 academic oncologists and clinicians of the North Shore-LIJ Cancer Institute will transform our approach to cancer research and treatment throughout the New York area,” North Shore-LIJ President and CEO Michael Dowling said in a statement.

Cold Spring Harbor Lab’s researchers have been studying cancer since the early 70s and have made several discoveries that have helped diagnose and treat cancer patients. In 1982, the lab was part of the discovery of the first human cancer gene. The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Cancer Center has been a National Cancer Institute-designated cancer center since 1987, and is the only such center on Long Island, according to the statement.

The lab’s research focuses on many different types of cancers: breast, lung, prostate, pancreas, cervix, ovary and skin, as well as leukemia and lymphoma, carcinoid tumors, sarcomas and more.

The cancer institute is part of the 19 health systems that makes up the North Shore-LIJ Health System. According to Zeidlickis, North Shore-LIJ cares for more than 16,000 new cancer cases each year and is New York State’s largest hospital system.

Under the terms of the partnership, both North Shore-LIJ and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory will continue as independent organizations governed by their respective boards of trustees.

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John Haley photo from SBU

By Daniel Dunaief

Once they reach their destination, they wreak havoc, destroying areas critical to life. All too often, when cancer spreads, or metastasizes, through the body, it becomes fatal.

John Haley, a Research Associate Professor in the Pathology Department at Stony Brook, is trying to figure out how cancer become metastatic and, even further, what they do to avoid recognition by the immune system.

Haley is “working on the mechanisms by which metastasis occurs,” he said. He is also studying the “immune recognition of tumor cells and, in the near future, wants to link the two.”

Understanding the way metastasis works can greatly reduce mortality in cancer, Haley said. Researchers are currently attempting to develop therapies that target metastatic cells, but these are often more difficult to kill than their primary counterparts, Haley explained.

The stakes are high, as 90 percent of cancer deaths are due to complications from the spread of cancer rather than the primary tumor itself, he said.

About 80 percent of human cancers are carcinomas, which are derived from epithelial cells. Those are the cells that make up the skin, and line the stomach and intestines.

“As cancers become metastatic, those cells have the ability to shape shift,” he said.

They become much more like fibroblasts, which are underneath the skin and glue the skin to bone and make up connective tissue layers. Haley said he has made some progress in understanding the molecular mechanism that allows cells to shift from epithelial to fibroblastic cells. They have “defined factors which promote” this transition, with differences in survival and growth pathways.

Haley works with a machine called a mass spectrometer, in which he identifies proteins in complex biological samples and measures how changes in composition alters function. He spends about half his time working on his own research and the other half assisting other researchers who are seeking to get a clearer view of key changes in proteins in their work.

In his own research, he wants to understand how cancers modify a cell’s proteins. He has helped define how cancers can change their protein signaling pathways to become drug resistant, which suggests targets for drug therapies.

Haley is tapping into an area of science that many other researchers are exploring, called bioinformatics. Using statistics and mathematical models, these scientists are cutting down on the number of genes and proteins they study, honing in on the ones that have the greatest chance to cause, or prevent, changes in a cell.

“We’re taking the data sets we’ve generated and trying to predict what we should look for in human patient samples,” Haley said. “We can find a tumor cell that have mutations or this expression profile and find drugs they are sensitive to.” Once scientists find those drugs, researchers can test them in cell cultures, then in mouse models and eventually in people, he said.

“We try to isolate someone’s cancer to understand what the molecular drivers are that occur in that cancer,” Haley said. The approach, as it is much of modern medicine, is to understand the patient’s genetics and biochemistry to select for a drug that would be effective against the particular mutations present in their tumor.

A resident of Sea Cliff, Haley is married to Lesley, whom he met while he was pursuing his PhD at Melbourne University. A native Australian, Lesley was completing her Masters in Opera when the couple met at a tennis match. They still play today. Lesley has sung at New York premieres for several living composers at concert venues including Avery Fischer Hall. She teaches music at her studio in Sea Cliff. Their children share their interests. John is a freshman studying biochemistry at Stony Brook University and Emma, who is a senior at North Shore High School, plans to study science and singing.

As for his work, Haley would like to see his efforts culminate in cancer therapies and diagnostics. Any novel therapy might also become a product for a start up company which could create jobs on Long Island. “There are some fabulous scientists” at the university, he said. “A major goal of the Center for Biotechnology and Diane Fabel, its director, is to create small businesses here in New York. I’m trying to help them in that goal.”

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Scott Powers with his wife Diane at a recent Cancer Research Gala. Photo by Julie Skarratt

By Daniel Dunaief

He spent 20 years looking at the problem in one way. Now, he’s ready for a change and Stony Brook officials stand behind him. After working in genomics at several locations, including for a decade as director of human cancer genomics at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to find therapeutic targets for human tumors, Scott Powers recently embraced the opportunity to find better ways to diagnose different types of cancer.

“A major driver for me coming to Stony Brook was to work on earlier detection,” Powers said.

Working with pathology department Chairman Ken Shroyer and Stony Brook obstetrician/gynecologist Michael Pearl, Powers is hoping to develop a prototype test for early detection of ovarian cancer so it can be removed by “simple surgery,” he said.

Powers has worked in numerous ways to isolate or identify mutations that might lead to cancer. That work focused on finding drug targets or developing therapies. One of the many challenges in studying genomics is that some mutations are bystanders, which means they likely don’t have a role in causing cancer or even, necessarily, in enabling cancer to spread. They make it harder to know whether they have a role or are merely different from the range of normal in a genetic sequence.

Some of the ways Powers has understood the potential part mutations play is by taking a computational approach, which can take many forms, including finding gene networks that are frequently altered. This approach has helped find various targets for therapies and improve the classification of tumors.

Powers said the “poster child” for success of this method was the development of the Oncotype DX test for breast cancer, which allows patients with node-negative, ER-positive breast cancer to determine whether they need to take chemotherapy.

He has also compared the gene sequences for similar cancer types across different species. He and Scott Lowe, who is now at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, found this approach could “help identify drivers and, in a sense, help filter out passengers,” he said. This has been successful on a basic science level but hasn’t yet led to the identification of a viable new therapeutic strategy, he said.

Powers’ focus now is to direct his expertise toward developing a test that might address early detection and, in some cases, improved diagnosis.

“It’s a brand new set of things for me to think about,” Powers said. The effort, he believes, should prove reinvigorating. The intellectual challenge of coming up with a solution that improves or enhances someone’s life motivates him.

Powers supports Stony Brook’s effort to add staff and develop a pool of researchers who can develop techniques and tools to aid in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. “I am very hopeful for Stony Brook to build up an intellectually interesting environment that will attract a new generation of cancer scientists to come on board,” he said.

Powers believes cancer is a complex disease that has many different variations. “Many random events occur that sometimes give the cancer cell a competitive survival advantage,” he explained. “Everyone’s tumor has its own unique combination of 10 to 25 genetic alterations that are driving it.”

In addition to working with Shroyer on developing diagnostic tools for the genomics of cancer, Powers has turned his attention toward other researchers on the campus with different backgrounds. He is planning a collaboration with Sasha Levy, who works at the Laufer Center for Physical and Quantitative Biology and is an assistant professor of biochemistry and cell biology, to study cancer evolution. He said they’ll be using experimental methods Levy has developed on yeast.

Yusuf Hannun, the director of the Cancer Center, has recruited Powers to participate on the tumor board, which is where physicians from different areas come to discuss specific patients in a multidisciplinary fashion.

“There are numerous discussions and plans to expand upon this growing trend to use genetic testing in developing a personalized strategy for each patient,” Powers said.

Powers and his wife Diane, who works in fundraising with Patricia Wright at Stony Brook in the anthropology department, live in Greenlawn with their daughter Camille, who is a sophomore at Harborfields High School. Their other children are Alexander, 25, who works for a nonprofit in Brooklyn called the Social Science Research Council, and Douglas, 21, who is a junior studying applied math at Harvard.

Powers was looking for two things that he found when he came to Stony Brook: “the chance to develop diagnostic tests” and to “enter new fields by finding new collaborators with scientists doing interesting things.”

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Geoffrey Girnun hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Photo from Girnun

By Daniel Dunaief

He hopes to use their addictions against them. By taking away what they depend on for survival, he would like to conquer a disease that ravages and, all too often, kills its victims.

Geoffrey Girnun, an associate professor in the pathology department and the director of cancer metabolomics at Stony Brook University, is looking closely at the addictions cancer has to certain pathways that normal cells do not. “It is really about starving the cancer,” he explained. “Perhaps what you feed the patient can starve the cancer.”

Cancer has a ramped-up metabolism that handles nutrients differently, Girnun explained. Differences between normal cells and cancer can provide scientists and doctors with opportunities to develop selective treatments.

Using mouse models, Girnun is exploring the role of different proteins that either promote or prevent various cancers. Recently, he has been studying one particular protein in the liver cell. This protein classically regulates the cell cycle, which is why finding it in the liver, which has non-dividing cells under normal conditions, was unusual.

Girnun discovered that it promotes how the liver produces sugar, in the form of glucose, to feed organs such as the brain under normal conditions. In diabetic mice, the protein goes back to its classic role as a cell cycle regulator.

“We’re using genetic and pharmaceutical mechanisms to dissect out whether increases in liver cancer associated with obesity in diabetics is dependent on this protein,” Girnun said. If he and other scientists can figure out how the protein that functions in one way can take on a different role, they might be able to stop that transformation.

“It’s like a linebacker becoming a quarterback,” Girnun said. He wants to figure out “how to turn it back” into a linebacker.

Girnun is exploring the metabolic pathways and signatures for liver cancer. If doctors are targeting one particular pathway, they might develop “personalized therapy that would help avoid treatments that wouldn’t be effective.”

Girnun’s peers and collaborators said he has contributed important research and insights in his laboratory.

Girnun is “considered a rising star, especially in the area of the downstream signaling events that modulate gluconeogenic gene expression,” explained Ronald Gartenhaus, a professor of medicine and co-leader of the Molecular and Structural Biology Program at the University of Maryland Cancer Center. Gartenhaus, who has known Girnun for seven years and collaborated with him, said metabolomics is “rapidly exploding with novel insights into the perturbed metabolism of cancer cells and how this information might be exploited for improved cancer therapeutics.”

What encouraged Girnun to consider the professional move to Stony Brook was the opportunity to create something larger. “I want to build a program in cancer metabolism,” he said. “I want to build something beyond my own lab.”

When he first spoke to the leadership at Stony Brook, including Ken Shroyer, the head of the pathology department, Yusuf Hannun, the director of the Cancer Center, and Lina Obeid, the dean of research at the School of Medicine, he felt as if he’d found a great match.

Girnun has been so busy working with other researchers that managing collaborations has become a part-time job, albeit one he finds productive and exciting.

Hannun said Girnun has identified “key investigators who are working on developing the field of nutrition and metabolomics.” Girnun is heading up a symposium on May 13th that focuses on innovations in basic and translational cancer metabolomics. The keynote speaker is Harvard Professor Pere Puigserver.

While Girnun changed jobs, he hasn’t moved his family yet from Baltimore. Every week, he commutes back and forth. Girnun and his wife Leah have five children, who range in age from preschool to high school. He hopes his family will move within the next year or so.

Girnun enjoys Stony Brook, where he said he has an office that overlooks the Long Island Sound and where he can run. When he’s hiking on Long Island, he said he has a chance to “think through my experiments.”

His commute from several states away shows “how much I was sold on Stony Brook,” he said. “We believe Stony Brook is moving up to the next level.”

He remains focused on the applications of his research toward people. “Something may be cool mechanistically, but, unless it’ll have a biologically meaningful result and affect how patients are treated or diagnosed, to me, it doesn’t matter,” he said.

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Counterclockwise from front row left, John Haley, Geoffrey Girnun, Scott Powers and Patricia Thompson. Photo from Stony Brook University

When local teams bring in superstars, the typical sports fan salivates at the prospect of winning a national championship. At the player level, success often breeds success, as other stars and talented players are eager to join teams where they believe in the philosophy of management and the talent of their teammates.

With considerably less fanfare to the typical Suffolk County resident, Stony Brook University has lured some promising researchers from around the country to its growing pathology department. What’s more, the newest members of the team not only have big plans for themselves and their department — they want to help Long Islanders who are battling cancer.

Their research aims to give doctors tools to make a more informed cancer diagnosis, create jobs by developing start-up companies and contribute to the Cancer Center’s goal of receiving a National Cancer Institute designation, which would allow Stony Brook to bid on multimillion dollar grants.

“We are looking for new ways to advance the practice of pathology that will improve the quality of health care nationwide and worldwide,” said Ken Shroyer, the head of the pathology department.

When Shroyer arrived in 2007, he said his first goal was to bring together the talent that was already working at the university. Like siblings who grow apart after they leave home, the clinical research and basic research efforts were working in parallel, rather than together.

After finding common ground for those groups, Shroyer added staff on the clinical side. His next priority, he said, was to boost the research department, which had only one externally funded investigator. That number now stands at 12, with four of the new staff coming in the last 18 months.

The newest researchers joined the pathology department and became leaders in the Cancer Center. “Each of these four individuals has a national reputation and special expertise in a particular area of cancer research,” Shroyer explained, saying he combed the research landscape to find the right experts in their field.

For their part, the new staff share an enthusiasm for the department and a vision for where it’s heading. An expert in finding biomarkers that help identify patients at risk of cancer recurrence, Patricia Thompson plans to encourage basic scientists to make discoveries that affect patient care.

Geoffrey Girnun, meanwhile, continues to study how cancer’s metabolism works, hoping to find differences between cancer cells and normal cells that can become targets for intervention and therapy.

After two decades searching for therapeutic targets for cancer, Scott Powers shifted gears and is now looking for ways to detect cancer earlier.

John Haley is concentrating on exploring how cancer cells escape detection from the immune system and become metastatic.

The director of the Cancer Center, Yusuf Hannun said the partnership with the pathology department is “key to bridging basic research discoveries to cancer specific research and then to human applications,” which could include biomarker discoveries, new therapeutics and individualized and personalized genomic cancer research.

Hannun believes the Cancer Center will continue to push the envelope in diagnosis, treatment and prevention. “We want to bring more special and unique abilities in the war against cancer,” Hannun said. “The inroads in cancer are happening.”

Stony Brook could become involved in prevention, where doctors and scientists work with patients before they develop any signs of the disease. “That domain is clearly within the scope of the Cancer Center,” Hannun said. “We are working on novel biomarkers that could detect very early cancer.”

Hannun described Shroyer as his “alter ego” in the Cancer Center. “He is a very capable leader and does very exciting cutting edge research with a steeped history in early diagnostics.”

Shroyer focuses his work on the discovery of biomarkers that can be used to improve diagnostic accuracy, provide prognostic information and identify more effective treatments for cancer, he said.

Five years from now, the success of the effort will be reflected by the extent to which the group can enhance the national standing of Stony Brook Medicine and the Cancer Center as leading institutions in basic and translational cancer research, Shroyer said.

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Annual St. Baldrick’s event brings in five figures after students shave heads to benefit good cause

Commack High School students and administrators take turns trimming their hair or shaving it off completely to benefit cancer research. Photo by Jenni Culkin

By Jenni Culkin

A line of students from Commack High School trailed from the school’s gymnasium doors to the next hallway.
The students eagerly waited to cut their hair for a worthy cause while the room buzzed with music, pizza, smoothies, an auction and the countless surprised faces of the brave people who lost inches of hair to raise money and awareness for the St. Baldrick’s Foundation.

“Hey, free haircut!” one student joked.

According to St. Baldrick’s official website, the event, which took place on March 6, raised $75,304.50 by the end. During the event, students played all kinds of volunteering roles to join the fight against cancer.

“It’s a great cause,” said David Malinovsky, an 11th-grade Commack High School student who had his head shaved. “It’s one of the most special things that we can do besides giving money.”

Even some of the female students hopped into the chairs to get their hair cut significantly shorter. Some female students even decided to have their entire head shaved for the cause.

“My uncle recently died of cancer,” said Carrie Fishbane, a 12th-grade student who had her entire head shaved. “I’m doing this in memory of him.”

Others decided not to lose their precious locks but to still help out in other ways.

“I think it’d be fair for a change if everyone else had no hair,” says Kyle Critelli, a 10th-grade student.

Critelli volunteered to sweep hair from the gymnasium floor. Other students got involved by selling food, drinks and merchandise that would all benefit the students.

Even nonstudents from the community got involved in the effort. Tara Forrest, a professional hairdresser with 17 years of experience, has been volunteering to cut hair for St. Baldrick events for three years.

“My whole family does it,” Forrest said with excitement,

Forrest said she was first inspired to donate her time and effort after one of her young son’s classmates was diagnosed with kidney cancer. She told her son Michael that his classmate’s remission is credited to “people like us that raise money.”

With that inspiration, Michael, who is now in second grade, has helped to raise roughly $10,000 through St. Baldrick’s within three years.

But the Forrest family was not the only one to let a personal situation inspire them to participate in charity work.

Lee Tunick, a math teacher from Commack High School, became the advisor for Yodel Kadodel, an extracurricular club at the school that raises awareness and money for cancer research with various activities throughout the year. The club has been running a St. Baldrick event for the past six years. Since then, roughly $450,000 has been raised.

“I have a friend whose daughter is sick,” said Tunick. “You feel so helpless from one parent to another. You want to do something to help if you can.”

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Two girls prepare to have their locks chopped off at a St. Baldrick’s event last year. File photo

By Jenni Culkin

The St. Baldrick’s Foundation’s yearly fundraising effort to get local residents engaged in the fight against childhood cancers kicks off this month.

Participants volunteer to shave their heads and in the process raise money for cancer research.
Find an event in your community below, or visit www.stbaldricks.org/events for more information.

Miller Place
March 14
Napper Tandy’s Irish Pub
275 Route 25A

Port Jefferson
March 22, 2-7 p.m.
Hurricane Grill & Wings
1037 Route 112

March 28, 6-9:30 p.m.
Schafer’s
111 West Broadway

Stony Brook
March 29
Three Village Heroes at the Bench
1095 Route 25A

Lake Grove
March 15, 12-6 p.m.
Miller’s Ale House
4000 Middle Country Road

Centereach
March 6, 7 p.m.
Centereach Civic Association
Centereach Fire Department
9 South Washington Avenue

Kings Park
March 22
The Park Lounge
605 East Main Street

Commack
March 6
Commack School District
1 Scholar Lane

Huntington
March 18
Walt Whitman High School
301 West Hills Road

Northport
March 15, 5-8 p.m.
Laurel Avenue School
158 Laurel Avenue

March 14, 12-7 p.m.
Napper Tandy’s Irish Pub
229 Laurel Avenue

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Kollin McDonald, fourth from left in top row with trophy, and his teammates and coaches after the game against Longwood on Friday, where he received the game ball and MVP trophy. Photo from Tom Femminella

Sometimes it’s not the wins or losses that matter most in a game, it’s the bonds formed when playing.

For Ward Melville senior Kollin McDonald, he realized how strong that bond was with his basketball teammates after the loss of his mother last week.

The guard darted to the hospital last Monday after receiving a text message that his mother was rushed there. Mary McDonald had cancer for seven years, starting with breast cancer, and after she was in remission was told it had come back more aggressively, and spread throughout her body.

Kollin McDonald and his mother Mary, while pumpkin picking this year. Photo from Kollin McDonald

The team attended the wake, and head coach Tom Femminella said despite it being an emotional evening, he thought it made it a little easier for his athlete to have his team’s support.

“As a coach in any sport you press the kids on family — family is important,” he said. “When you’re actually there and someone needs you when the chips aredown, it shows a lot of resolve that will hopefully transfer onto the court and will make these kids closer for the season and hopefully for the rest of their lives.”

Femminella invited McDonald’s close friend and teammate Chris Woods to ask McDonald if he would play as a starter in Friday’s game — the same day as his mother’s funeral.

“For him it was the most exciting news,” Woods said. “His family was all excited once they heard too, and they came after the funeral to the game.”

Being that McDonald is not normally a starter, it was a memorable moment for him walking out on the court.

“It was honestly an honor to be asked to play ” McDonald said. “It was more of a ‘getting past and moving on’ thing because once I got asked, I was very emotional, but I knew at that point that we were a strong team and that they had my back with anything.”

McDonald said the memories of his mother and thinking about her every day is what gets him through, but it is also the love from his coach and teammates, and it showed that night on the court.

The senior started off the evening with two rebounds in a 50-40 win over Longwood, and it ignited the team.

“Those were probably the two most aggressive rebounds I’ve ever had — ever, in any game I’ve ever played,” he said with a laugh. “It was very emotional watching the tape afterward because I knew [those rebounds] were for my mom, and it was a great feeling.”

Kollin McDonald and his mother Mary after his sixth-grade graduation. Photo from Kollin McDonald

The team wore pink socks in support of breast cancer awareness to the game and will continue to wear them through the rest of the season, Femminella said, adding that he will also be wearing special sneakers to support his player.

“It was more important that he was getting back to a little bit of normalcy,” Femminella said. “And then we brought him the trophy and the game ball, and he got the MVP [title] because he was the MVP. He inspired the rest of the kids. If he can be there and he can show this effort and be strong, why can’t they?”

Woods also said it was great to see his friend and teammate in high spirits.

“He had a big smile on his face and was able to go out there and start the game,” Woods said, adding that he and his teammates were also grinning from ear-to-ear and leaping off the bench when McDonald scored. “It helped him get his mind off of things to get him out there. It was the best feeling for all of us when he got those rebounds — he played his heart out.”

McDonald said it’s meant everything to have his school’s support.

“Having a group of guys to talk to at any point and any time in my life,” he said, “it’s a great feeling.”

McDonald thanked his teammates and coaches for their support after what he said is his most memorable game , adding that he thought wearing the pink socks for the rest of the season is a nice way for them to support him and his family for the remainder of the year.

“We’re taking this tough event as a bonding moment for all of us,” Woods said. “I think Kollin is going through a tough time, but the pink socks represent how we’ve all become brothers, and we’re all going to be there for each other no matter what happens.”

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