The UF Health Cancer Center is speeding toward a “Moonshot” goal
The cancer diagnosis Dana Brandon received at age 62 made it plain that her life’s journey would soon come to a close.
The anticipated course of the glioblastoma growing in Brandon’s brain could be told in dry clinical statistics that said nothing of her abiding faith or her dreams to watch her family live full lives. The numbers plotted how the typical patient diagnosed with this most aggressive and deadly of brain tumors lived, on average, a mere 16 months.
Brandon, who lived in Tampa but whose family has strong ties to the University of Florida, came to the UF Health Cancer Center, which offers the largest and most diverse portfolio of immunotherapy trials for brain tumor patients of any center in the United States and, with recent designation from the National Cancer Institute, is poised more than it’s ever been to change how we know cancer.
The immunotherapy treatment she was given as part of a UF Health Cancer Center clinical trial bought Brandon something whose value was incalculable: time.
Her treatment bought cherished milestones she thought cancer would steal. It bought time making crafts with her grandchildren and trips to the mountains. It bought her a front-row seat at a daughter’s wedding and a grandson’s kindergarten graduation.
“It’s very hard to find a center that will even give a patient with glioblastoma hope of time with family,” said her daughter, Christy Dunn. “I remember when she was first diagnosed, she said, ‘I just want to see you get married and have children.’ I was thinking, ‘That’s not possible with what they’re telling us.’”
Brandon died in the spring of 2024. She lived long enough to not only see her daughter marry but also to welcome Dunn’s first daughter into the world, a bundle of joy they named Dana in her honor. Amid her most difficult personal trial, Brandon found time to help organize the 5K Cancer Chomp event, which has raised more than $150,000 for UF Health brain tumor patients.
“She didn’t miss out on those moments with our family,” Dunn said. “She lived a full life. She was engaged and aware up until the end.”
The UF Health Cancer Center team recognizes that giving a patient more time with loved ones is a blessing. But the day in, day out goal is to end cancer as we know it — a renewed vision set out by President Biden’s Cancer Moonshot.
The UF Health Cancer Center’s National Cancer Institute-designated advanced research labs and clinical research infrastructure develop more effective treatments. With more than $53 million in total research funding, including almost $19 million from the NCI, and 250 clinical trials, Cancer Center members across 11 of UF’s 16 colleges drive advances — from vaccines to personalized cancer screening technology. The center offered 100 early-phase cancer trials in 2023 alone.
The center earned NCI designation in 2023, placing it among the country’s most distinguished cancer centers. There are only 72, and the UF Health Cancer Center is the only one at a Florida public university. Designation means the center meets rigorous standards in its research and has advanced scientific leadership, distinctive training programs, and forward-thinking community outreach efforts.
“We have effectively brought our university together to mount an attack against cancer,” said Jonathan D. Licht, M.D., the UF Health Cancer Center’s director. “NCI designation means we have reached a national standard of excellence, that we are dedicated to providing optimal care for the patients in front of us, for the patients who are not yet in our system through prevention and screening, and for future patients by advancing new, more effective therapies.”
Achieving the Cancer Moonshot vision requires a framework for action. In 2023, the NCI released the National Cancer Plan, which has eight goals and one mantra: Everyone has a role.
That role isn’t always as splashy as publishing research in a top-flight journal or speaking to an audience of science luminaries.
It’s often in the tender, unheralded actions that happen daily. The oncology nurse who remembers a patient’s favorite music. The graduate student who goes into the lab on a Saturday morning to check cell cultures. The patient who finds the courage to persevere.
It’s seen in the UF Health Cancer Center, which has nearly 350 cancer researchers and more than 150 staff members in every corner of UF. The tenets of NCI designation shape the center’s projects and initiatives, ensuring they align with the federal government’s priorities.
Farmlands to the coast
The Cancer Center’s coverage area spans 23 counties spread over 17,494 square miles, from the piney woods of Live Oak to the brackish waters of Apalachicola Bay. Sixteen of those counties are largely rural.
Lung, breast, colorectal, and brain cancers are the region’s most prevalent and deadly. While the Cancer Center’s researchers and clinicians work to save lives, the first goal is to prevent cancer through research and interventions in three risk areas: smoking, HPV, and obesity.
Sometimes that means you’ll find the Cancer Center’s community outreach and engagement team partnering to host Zumba demonstrations, healthy food giveaways, or education about eating well on a budget, as they were one Saturday morning in early March 2024 at the Black Family Expo at Greater Bethel AME Church in East Gainesville.
There, Jamie Hensley, MHCM, CCRP, navigated booths where community health educators shared cancer prevention tips and screening guidelines, and outreach workers stacked giveaway boxes full of vegetables and food staples.
“Despite the historical lack of resources in this area, the community enthusiastically participated,” said Hensley, assistant director of cancer screening and cancer navigation. The event served nearly 50 people, offering on-site mammography screens and colorectal cancer screening kits.
From early 2022 through early 2024, the team was part of 93 such events, reaching nearly 4,500 people with breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer screenings.
Efforts to bring cancer screening and health care services directly to people received a major lift this fall when the center launched its first mobile outreach vehicle — the first of its kind in North Central Florida. The Mobile Cancer Screening Connector offers 3D mammography and screenings for cervical, colon, and prostate cancers. This 40-foot-long clinic on wheels includes 3D mammography, private patient screening room, and educational resources to serve a highly rural region larger than southern New England. It stresses early cancer detection, the second goal of the National Cancer Plan, by eliminating obstacles like transportation and lost work time.
Reducing disparities
All 23 counties the Cancer Center covers are medically underserved. These include five of Florida’s six counties with persistent adult poverty — Alachua, Gadsden, Hamilton, Madison, and Putnam.
Ensuring the region’s 2.3 million residents have access to high-quality cancer care requires concerted efforts to eliminate inequities, another of the National Cancer Plan’s goals.
Launched this year, the Transportation & Lodging for Care, or TLC, service is one way the center lowers barriers. It covers gas, lodging, and food for qualified cancer patients in treatment who have exhausted other resources.
“If patients can’t get here and get access to care, then we can’t help them,” said Kristen Tarbox, MSW, LCSW, an oncology clinical social worker at UF Health. “It’s such a stress off our patients, who are already going through the stress of cancer treatment.”
Bruce Bence, who lives about an hour away from UF Health in Bell, Florida, found his financial worries mounting as he managed travel for long days of treatment and appointments for bladder cancer.
“It was getting costly to get back and forth, and it alleviated some of the cost,” he said. “That was very helpful and I’m very grateful.”
The service is one of the ways the center is reducing disparities in clinical trial participation. In 2023, half the enrollees in clinical trials of new treatments were women, up from 33% in 2022, more in line with the region’s demographics.
To truly understand the root causes of cancer health disparities, researchers use molecular and epidemiological approaches, from unraveling genomic pathways to analyzing social factors that determine health.
Jatinder Lamba, Ph.D., an associate dean of research and graduate education and professor in the UF College of Pharmacy, mines troves of data to reach insights that are poised to change clinical approaches to cancers like leukemia.
Lamba’s team has spent years collecting and evaluating data from large national clinical trials to develop strategies to match patients with the most effective treatment based on their genetics. The scoring system they created investigates genetics of drug pathways and assesses why some patients have poor responses.
Recently, Lamba applied this precision-medicine approach to investigating why Black patients with acute myeloid leukemia have historically had worse outcomes than white patients.
The scoring method not only identifies patients likely to have poor outcomes based on their genetics but also allows them to have an elective therapy that improves their chance of survival, she said.
Through her leadership role with the center’s new Cancer Targeting and Therapeutics research program, Lamba’s expertise complements high-powered drug discovery at The Herbert Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation & Technology in Jupiter, Florida, paving the way for new cancer drugs so tiny they can easily enter cells and hit their targets.
Enhancing immunotherapy
Immunotherapy, which involves harnessing a patient’s immune system to attack their cancer, is one of the most transformative advancements in cancer care in recent decades, yet it works only 20% to 40% of the time.
Weizhou Zhang, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Pathology, Immunology and Laboratory Medicine, has studied cancer for more than two decades, first looking at signaling pathways involved in cancer progression and later, asking questions like how obesity-related inflammation affects cancer.
One of his lab’s recent quests: Working to develop new cancer immunotherapy treatments by collaborating with UF medicinal chemists to create small compounds that target cellular proteins.
Zhang was part of a UF team that developed the first drug of its kind allowed to proceed to clinical trial in 2021 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. That drug used a technology that relies on small molecules that, instead of just suppressing cancer-promoting proteins, help cells break them down.
That technology, called PROTACs (Proteolysis TArgeting Chimeras), targeted a protein that fuels the growth of malignant cells and makes them resist medicine. In the years since, Zhang’s lab has explored other PROTAC targets with the lab of Guangrong Zheng, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry.
This spring, they identified another protein target and developed another PROTAC to attack it.
“We found through laboratory and mouse testing in skin and colorectal cancer models that this novel compound may be more effective as a single agent than current immunotherapy treatments,” Zhang said.
Ultimately, he said, their therapy might be an option for patients whose bodies resist or don’t respond to immunotherapy.
Through a $3.4 million NCI grant, Zhang collaborates with Moffitt Cancer Center researchers to study how the compound could enhance immunotherapy for melanoma, the deadliest skin cancer. Developing effective treatments is another goal of the National Cancer Plan.
‘They created space for us’
The Cancer Center aligns clinical research and care and plays a major role in recruiting leaders in the field, ensuring it delivers optimal care, the fifth goal of the National Cancer Plan. Each year, UF Health treats about 23,000 cancer patients.
For Brandon, treatment began at UF Health after her stroke-like symptoms were assumed by Tampa doctors to be complications of a migraine. Dunn, who at the time worked in administration at UF Health Physicians, contacted a trusted neurologist and asked for advice.
The doctor suggested they come to UF Health for testing, and her family drove directly there. Imaging revealed a brain tumor that was causing Brandon’s seizures.
“We had so much confidence in the team here that there was never a question of moving her care back locally,” Dunn said. “What impressed me the most about her care team was how much they all communicated with one another. Any time I would call and say, ‘we have this new symptom’ or ‘this is happening,’ it was like a ripple effect. People would call, they would take care of it.”
During her initial radiation treatment and later during her clinical trial treatment, Brandon’s care team did little things that made all the difference in her ability to stay the course as treatment got difficult.
“We would show up and the nurses would have her music blaring, they would have warm blankets ready for her,” Dunn said. “They took the time to remember the things that made my mom feel loved and comfortable. They created space for us in a way they didn’t have to.”
Patients like Brandon who are part of a clinical trial receive dedicated support from a research coordinator, part of the personalized care given to all UF Health patients, said Ashley Ghiaseddin, M.D., a UF Health neurooncologist who treated Brandon.
“Clinical trials may offer opportunities for patients to prolong life, as well as improve the overall quality of their life,” Ghiaseddin said. “I don’t think I’ve ever come across anyone with such a positive attitude in the face of a very difficult disease. She was inspiring to all of us.”
Brandon’s clinical trial was the largest institution-led immunotherapy trial for glioblastoma in the country when it began. The insights it provided led the way to other cancer vaccine-based studies by the UF Brain Tumor Immunotherapy Program that are now making breakthroughs.
They include the recent discovery of a potential new way to recruit the immune system to fight treatment-resistant cancers like glioblastoma using mRNA technology and lipid nanoparticles. In a first-ever human clinical trial of four adult patients, the mRNA cancer vaccine quickly reprogrammed the immune system to attack glioblastoma.
In 2023, the Cancer Center enrolled 2,666 patients in interventional clinical trials and 315 in treatment trials. Almost all the interventional trials are initiated by UF investigators rather than a pharmaceutical company, an indicator of the four research programs’ strength.
Such clinical trials are a key differentiator in the care offered at NCI-designated cancer centers.
“Our challenge is to go beyond providing patients with the optimal care as understood by the field now and think about the best care in the future,” Licht said.
“Our challenge is to go beyond providing patients with the optimal care as understood by the field now and think about the best care in the future.”
Jonathan D. Licht, M.D.
Preparing a skilled workforce
When she took home the gold prize in the UF College of Medicine’s 2023 Medical Guild Research Symposium, Rachel Newsome used some of her prize money to throw a pizza party for her lab mates. After all, she had to thank everyone for their role.
As a UF undergraduate, Newsome began researching a metabolite in E. coli believed to cause genetic mutations that lead to colorectal cancer. She joined the lab of Christian Jobin, co-leader of the Cancer Center’s Immuno-Oncology and Microbiome research program, as a lab tech and continued as a doctoral student.
Through a collaboration with Moffitt Cancer Center, Newsome and UF researchers discovered new ways to harness the microbiome to enhance immunotherapy treatment in the most common type of lung cancer. The microbiome is the community of trillions of microorganisms that live inside the human gut.
“From bacteria, we discovered a novel small molecule that we are now developing commercially to improve patient responses to immunotherapy treatment, hopefully in several types of cancers,” Newsome said.
Now a postdoctoral researcher, Newsome is working to launch a startup company, Bebi Therapeutics, with Jobin as her co-founder. The startup will license the four patents that resulted from her doctoral research. Newsome exemplifies another National Cancer Plan goal, optimizing the workforce.
Led by Dietmar Siemann, Ph.D., educational programs targeting high school students and teachers all the way through established Cancer Center faculty train the next generation of cancer researchers. Rated exceptional by the NCI, some of the programs are the only ones of their kind among NCI centers, such as a team-based training that pairs pre- and postdoctoral cancer researchers.
Creating a thriving data science community
If it’s noon on a Tuesday, you can count on finding Ji-Hyun Lee, DrPH, and her team faithfully logging into Zoom to host a walk-in clinic. They don’t treat injuries or ailments: They help cancer scientists conduct statistically and bioinformatically sound research.
Researchers can pop in — no appointment needed — and ask questions about study design, sample size calculation, graphic illustration, data management, programming, or any other statistical topic.
The clinic is just one of the ways the center’s Biostatistics and Computational Biology Shared Resource, directed by Lee, the Cancer Center’s associate director for cancer quantitative sciences, fulfills an essential scientific component for all cancer research projects, ensuring accuracy and reliability. On Jan. 1, Lee became the 120th president of the American Statistical Association, the largest professional group for statisticians and data scientists in the world.
To truly maximize data utility, another National Cancer Plan goal, the Cancer Center is creating a Cancer Data Commons — a digital warehouse of cancer-specific data that’s easily searchable for reuse.
‘The more we know, the more we can do’
In April 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic barreled in, Iris Harris sat in an emergency room in Gainesville not affiliated with UF Health. Her annual physical had revealed severely low iron levels, so she underwent an endoscopy and colonoscopy. Then a doctor walked in and told the then-53-year-old she had Stage 4 colon cancer and needed chemotherapy immediately.
On a Saturday morning almost exactly four years after her diagnosis, Harris sat before a packed congregation at an East Gainesville church as a panelist at one of the center’s Power Over Cancer gatherings. This one was focused on colorectal cancer, and Harris, who had entered remission after treatment at UF Health, shared a story of hope.
The gatherings aim to empower the community, especially those in predominantly Black East Gainesville neighborhoods, by offering health information and opportunities to participate in research studies. The goal is to bring the Cancer Center’s research out of the esoteric and into the here and now.
“It’s very impactful,” Harris said. “A lot of times the Black communities get overlooked. We don’t have that information. The more we know, the more we can do.”
Through events like the Power Over Cancer series, the Cancer Center engages every person, the final goal in the National Cancer Plan.
As the Cancer Center looks to its next goal — comprehensive designation from the NCI — center director Licht wants to engage even more people, growing the ranks of cancer researchers across campus. Comprehensive designation means a cancer center is outstanding in every way.
After the first year of NCI designation, Licht is optimistic. He wants to boost the center’s research budget to $75 million and deepen the impact of discoveries. He knows it will take everyone playing a role.
Dunn is still playing hers. This year, she again helped organize the Cancer Chomp fundraiser. She knew her mom would have wanted her to stay involved.
So much has changed. But their battalion of supporters hasn’t. Their team of family and friends wore custom shirts for the Cancer Chomp, emblazoned with “It is well,” taken from the title of Brandon’s favorite comforting hymn, “It is Well with My Soul.”
Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say; It is well, it is well, with my soul.
