Fueling Cancer Research Breakthroughs With Patient Contributions

Karen Winkfield, MD, PhD, the Ingram Professor of Cancer Research at Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center, professor of medicine at Meharry Medical College, and executive director of the Meharry-Vanderbilt Alliance, discusses the importance of research that extends beyond academia to be relevant to the communities it hopes to benefit.

Revisit part 1 and part 2 of the interview.

This transcript has been edited for clarity; captions were auto-generated.

Transcript

How can we bridge the gap between scientific research and the needs of our communities?

So there are 2 key components of the question you just asked. One is, how do we engage communities more in the research process? That's kind of what I'm hearing. But then also, how do we make research more relevant to the communities around us? Again, I think it's 2 components.

One of the things that I think is really important is, even when we're doing basic science, to really have an idea of what's the end game. There are some folks who, [and] that's the beauty of being in academia, sometimes it's just pure science—“I want to understand this molecule and how it functions or works”—but we do all of that to make life better. That's why we do it. And for folks who are doing research that may be cancer relevant, kind of continually thinking about the patient and having the patient in mind, having the end user, if you will, in mind when you're developing allows for us to utilize not only the technologies better, but also to utilize these individuals who can help provide insights into maybe there's different side effects when they take a certain medicine or maybe there are things that you hadn't thought about. And in your mind, you can start to say, “Oh wait, I remember another molecule that I was working on that actually had this similar impact or effect.”

Believe it or not, patients’ experiences in their bodies and how they have gone through a cancer treatment actually can help drive discoveries. It can actually help make the science better. One of the things at Vanderbilt that we do, which I have loved watching because it makes my heart happy, for many of our large, big grants that we have—for instance, the GI SPORE award that we have, this is a big grant that we have that actually is focused on gastrointestinal cancer, so GI cancers—there are several patient partners that are included as coinvestigators.

They literally get in the room with all the basic scientists, with the clinical and translational researchers. Man, it's incredible to hear them talk about, “Oh, well, this is what my experience was, etc.” They are there at the table helping to provide input. And I think that's important.