A TGen-Scottsdale Healthcare study shows how new screening tools help doctors decide which chemotherapy treatment to give patients based on their genetic makeup.

Dr. Daniel Von Hoff, principal investigator of the nine-site Phoenix-based study, said results show the promise of personalized medicine. “As these tools become more precise and more effective, the value of personalized medicine will increase,” he said. Von Hoff’s dual role at Scottsdale Healthcare and the Translational Genomics Research Institute brought the two nonprofit organizations together to lead the study. He is physician in chief at TGen and a physician at Scottsdale Healthcare

The clinical trial involved 66 patients at nine sites throughout the nation, two-thirds of them at Scottsdale Healthcare. The study evaluated the effectiveness of an oncology testing service called Target Now, made by Irving, Texas-based Caris Diagnostics. Caris in 2008 bought Molecular Profiling Institute, a spinout from TGen and International Genomics Consortium. Von Hoff also is an executive director of Caris’ Tissue Banking and Analysis Center Inc.
All the patients in the trial had late-stage cancer, including breast, colorectal, ovarian and other solid tumors, and all had failed in prior chemotherapy regimens. For these patients, the study represented a last-ditch effort to find the right chemo cocktail. “These patients didn’t have a lot of treatment options,” Von Hoff said.

Mark Slater, vice president of research at Scottsdale Healthcare, credited collaboration between the organizations for making the study possible. “These are the kinds of things that neither organization could do on their own,” he said. “It’s a groundbreaking preliminary study that really shows the potential for this area of personalized medicine.”
Dr. David Loesch, director of oncology and clinical trials and services for Caris Diagnostics, said the Target Now test will help doctors pick medicine that helps eliminate toxic chemotherapy that patients don’t need. “Now we have a roadmap potentially to treat the patient,” he said.

Von Hoff was in Denver this weekend, presenting his findings at the 100th annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. Loesch, also part of the trial, said Von Hoff submitted the abstract after the AACR’s deadline. But when reviewers saw the abstract, they thought it needed prominence at the conference, and asked Von Hoff to give an oral presentation in a plenary session, Loesch said. “Very few papers are allowed to be presented from that standpoint,” he said. “It was a high-enough rated abstract. The implications are so great they felt this needed to be presented as an oral presentation to the entire assembly,” he said, estimating there would be as many as 10,000 oncologists and cancer researchers at the event.

Most trials of this stature are funded by the National Institutes of Health, but this trial was funded locally, said John Ferree, president of Scottsdale Healthcare Foundation. Jerry Bisgrove, CEO of the Stardust Foundation in Scottsdale, gave Scottsdale Healthcare $5 million for cancer research.

Ferree said about $4 million went to pay for the trial, while another $1 million went to support the Debi Bisgrove Cancer Care Coordinator position, in honor of Bisgrove’s wife, who died of cancer in January 2007.

“Research never pays for itself, no matter what you do,” Ferree said. “We’re very dependent upon philanthropy. We’ve been very fortunate here to have had some people step up and really put some hard money into research.”

Ferree estimates thousands of donors have contributed more than $30 million to Scottsdale Healthcare Foundation for infrastructure, programs and services in its oncology initiative. “Incredible life-changing and life-saving research is currently being done around the world that quietly began at Scottsdale Healthcare,” he said. “Neither that research nor any other research being done here would have ever been possible without the generous philanthropic support of people like Debi and Jerry Bisgrove and the Stardust Foundation.”

For more: Scottsdale Healthcare, www.shc.org  Caris Diagnostics, www.carisdx.com  Translational Genomics Research Institute, www.tgen.org

Banner Health has struck a deal with one of the most recognized names in cancer care to open a new hospital and outpatient-treatment center on the campus of Banner’s Gateway Medical Center in Gilbert.

The deal brings the cutting-edge care of M.D. Anderson Cancer Center to consumers and adds a major new competitor to metropolitan Phoenix’s growing field of cancer health-care providers.

The $90 million center, which will be named the M.D. Anderson Banner Cancer Center, is slated to open in late 2011 at Banner Gateway, U.S. 60 and Higley Road. The center will include all aspects of cancer care, including surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and supporting clinical services. The deal stems from nearly two years of talks between Banner Health, Arizona’s largest hospital network, and the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, which is part of the University of Texas.

Banner Chief Executive Officer Peter Fine said Banner considered several health-care partners and decided that the rapidly expanding Arizona hospital network’s vision jibed with M.D. Anderson’s goal of growing beyond its main Houston campus.

“M.D. Anderson is the Number 1 cancer center in the world,” Fine said. “This is a development for the people of Arizona, for the people who are touched by cancer in many ways.”

M.D. Anderson, rated as the nation’s top cancer hospital by U.S. News & World Report, is the latest cancer-care provider to claim a stake in the growing and potentially lucrative Phoenix region. Others offering cancer care include Mayo Clinic Arizona and the for-profit Cancer Treatment Centers of America in Goodyear, as well as community hospitals such as St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, Scottsdale Healthcare and others.

Roger Hughes, executive director of the public-health foundation St. Luke’s Health Initiatives, said the M.D. Anderson partnership puts Banner in a strong competitive position among area hospitals.

“(M.D. Anderson) certainly has a stellar reputation in terms of providing top quality, cutting-edge care,” Hughes said. “They will draw (patients) from outside the Phoenix metro region.”

Room in Gilbert

Banner Health chose Gateway in suburban Gilbert because the large campus has easy access and room to grow.

The facility will include a 120,000-square-foot outpatient center modeled after similar buildings at M.D. Anderson’s main Houston campus and 76 beds on two floors inside Banner Gateway, which will be reserved for cancer patients who need more intensive inpatient care.

Fine said Banner Health studied the possibility of building the cancer hospital and outpatient facility in central Phoenix, but such a move was not financially realistic.
Banner’s flagship hospital, Good Samaritan Medical Center in central Phoenix, is full and cannot spare any beds for a new specialty unit, and developing a new outpatient center in central Phoenix would require a costly land purchase or teardown of an existing building. Fine estimated it would cost the non-profit hospital group $250 million or more to build a similar facility downtown.

Banner will bear all development costs and will equip the new facility. Banner will pay for the new center with more than $1 billion in bonds previously issued to help finance Banner’s new hospital, hospital expansions and an acquisition of the two-hospital Sun Health system.

Downtown options
The deal between Banner and M.D. Anderson means that Banner will no longer pursue plans to build a cancer hospital in downtown Phoenix.
Banner previously discussed with the University of Arizona the possibility of developing a downtown teaching hospital and cancer hospital that would anchor the Phoenix Biomedical Campus, which includes the UA College of Medicine-Phoenix.
Those talks ceased months ago over disagreements over costs and staffing for such a downtown facility.
UA is still pursuing plans to build a hospital or clinic in downtown Phoenix.
“In the academic cancer world, we need as many hands on deck as possible to fight cancer,” said Dr. Thomas Brown, chief operating officer of UA’s Arizona Cancer Center.
Brown said the Arizona Cancer Center, based in Tucson, still plans to open a large outpatient cancer clinic in Phoenix with or without a hospital partner.
Maricopa Integrated Health System remains interested in building a hospital within its central Phoenix district to replace the aging Maricopa Medical Center. Maricopa was spurned in its initial effort to partner with UA, but the university is interested in resuming talks with the public-health district about potentially building a hospital closer to UA’s downtown medical school. State and university budget cuts during the recession are complicating factors, however.
Anderson’s foray
The M.D. Anderson Banner Cancer Center will be the Houston-based provider’s first major foray into the western United States. The health-care provider has a similar satellite hospital in Orlando under a 20-year agreement with a major hospital group there. It also has a hospital in Spain.
Dr. Thomas Burke, M.D. Anderson’s executive vice president and physician in chief, said the Houston-based provider and Banner will jointly develop plans on staffing the new facility.
He expects the new hospital to open with up to 50 physicians who will be recruited from within the ranks of Banner Health, M.D. Anderson or elsewhere. Newly recruited doctors will be required to train at M.D. Anderson for two to four weeks, depending on specialty, to learn M.D. Anderson’s standards and routines.
M.D. Anderson will manage the center and will be responsible for filling top positions such as the chief medical officer and chief nursing officer.
Clinical research
The new cancer center will bolster Banner Health’s clinical-trial offerings. These clinical trials, which give patients access to cutting-edge drugs that are not yet approved for public use by the Food and Drug Administration, are typically more readily available at hospitals with academic affiliations such as Mayo Clinic or the University of Arizona.
Dr. Jeffrey Trent, president of the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Phoenix, said M.D. Anderson’s plans show that the Phoenix area’s reputation in medical research continues to grow.
“Arizona is enhancing its national and international presence in this universe of biomedical research,” said Trent, whose organization has research ties with M.D. Anderson, Mayo, Scottsdale Healthcare and others.

John C. Lincoln Health Network this week opened a new breast-health and research center next to its Deer Valley hospital.

The new 9,000-square-foot center will offer clinical care as well as research under an agreement with Translational Genomics Research Institute.
Breast-cancer patients will have the option of confidentially donating their tumor tissue to aid TGen’s research of breast cancer.

TGen researchers are seeking to collect up to 500 tumor samples from John C. Lincoln as well as tissue donations from patients at other area hospitals.
Heather Cunliffe, who heads TGen’s Breast & Ovarian Cancer Research Unit, said the goal of the breast-cancer study is to develop a comprehensive molecular overview of the varying types of breast cancer to discover new ways to combat the disease. TGen researchers trained John C. Lincoln employees on the best ways to preserve tissue samples.

Neurosurgeon P. David Adelson acknowledged it’s a risky move to leave a comfortable position at the University of Pittsburgh to head a new pediatric unit at Phoenix Children’s Hospital.

In Pittsburgh, Adelson had an established medical community and a thriving research base. But he sees more opportunity in Phoenix because of the region’s growing pediatric population and desire to embrace cutting-edge neurological research.

“I thought there was good pediatric neuroscience here, but maybe it had not grown the research and development as much,” Adelson said, citing the lack of a major medical school in downtown Phoenix prior to the opening of the University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix.

He takes over a newly-created division of Phoenix Children’s Hospital called the Children’s Neuroscience Institute. The new institute will treat a wide range of pediatric brain illnesses and injuries including neurosurgery and rehabilitation.
Adelson’s goal is to establish a respected pediatric research base in Phoenix, and he wants to partner with fellow scientists at Phoenix-area research groups such as St. Joseph’s Barrow Neurological Institute, Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute and the Translational Genomics Research Institute to make that happen.

He brings with him significant funding. He has secured $14 million from the National Institutes of Health funding to study whether a brain-cooling device can help children recover from traumatic head injuries. His research lab at the University of Pittsburgh Department of Neurological Surgery will remain involved in the project.

Such treatment already is used on infants who suffer brain injuries during birth and has been shown to improve outcomes for newborns. Less clear is whether similar therapy works on older children, Adelson said.

“It is not a benign therapy,” Adelson said. “It requires a certain amount of technical expertise.”
Adelson said a pilot trial showed that such cooling treatment, when applied properly, reduced trauma fatalities from 15 percent to 5 percent in serious cases.
Adelson said he will continue to study in Phoenix, treating children of all ages who suffer traumatic head injuries in car crashes, birth, abuse or other accidents. He said it is important to treat children within the first six hours of an accident for the cooling treatment to be effective.

He said he already has reached out to other area hospitals and university researchers as part of an effort to improve the region’s research infrastructure and equipment.
A Barrow Neurological Institute representative said Adelson’s expertise in trauma surgery is a valued addition to the Phoenix area’s medical community.

Barrow already has several centers that deal with brain injuries and diseases such as epilepsy, muscular dystrophy, craniofacial and cleft conditions and hypothalamic hamartoma, which is a brain tumor that can trigger seizures or other medical problems.

Barrow’s child neurologists are studying areas such as epilepsy and the role diet plays in managing seizures. The group also studies the genetic roots of neurological conditions in children.
“We look forward to working with him as we jointly face these challenges,” Phil Pomeroy, Barrow’s vice president of neurosciences, said in a statement.

The new Phoenix Children’s Neuroscience Institute will also include four pediatric neuro-radiologists as well as an epilepsy monitoring unit and a headache clinic. The Emerald Foundation provided a $4 million gift to institute to establish the Frances H. McClelland Center for Pediatric Rehabilitation, which will provide rehabilitation services for children.

John C. Lincoln Health Network this week opened a new breast-health and research center next to its Deer Valley hospital.

The new 9,000-square-foot center will offer clinical care as well as research under an agreement with Translational Genomics Research Institute.

Breast-cancer patients will have the option of confidentially donating their tumor tissue to aid TGen’s research of breast cancer.
TGen researchers are seeking to collect up to 500 tumor samples from John C. Lincoln as well as tissue donations from patients at other area hospitals.

Heather Cunliffe, who heads TGen’s Breast & Ovarian Cancer Research Unit, said the goal of the breast-cancer study is to develop a comprehensive molecular overview of the varying types of breast cancer to discover new ways to combat the disease. TGen researchers trained John C. Lincoln employees on the best ways to preserve tissue samples.

Prominent names in Arizona politics and business will serve on the Board of Directors for Cancer Treatment Centers of America’s new hospital in Goodyear. CTCA, is based in Schaumberg, IL

The for-profit hospital chain opened in January 2009, southeast of I-10 and Bullard Avenue, the first in the Southwestern U.S. The $107.9 million hospital is expected to create more than 400 jobs and have about a $400 million economic impact over 5 years. It features 14 inpatient beds and an outpatient clinic.

Along with traditional therapy, the Goodyear hospital will offer a full range of alternative treatments and such perks as free plane tickets and limo service for traveling patients.

To help you relieve stress, here are 79 quick tips and tricks to use anytime you need to chill out—before the big meeting, after that argument with your spouse, as you’re racing through your daily to-do list. Try these, and you’ll feel better.

1. Roll up your area rugs and walk around the house barefoot, like you’re on a beach house vacation.

2. Crawl between soothing sheets, freshly washed with scented detergent or linen rinse, such as Tide Simple Pleasures lavender and vanilla.

3. Pop some bubble wrap. Can’t find the real thing? Go to http://www.virtual-bubblewrap.com

4. Quickie yoga: Standing, bend and place palms on your thighs. With chin parallel to the floor, breathe in and arch your chest forward; breathe out and arch it up like a cat.

5. Blow up a balloon in slow, three-second puffs.

6. Stare at the blue sky (a calming color) and watch the clouds float by.

7. Watch a two-minute replay of The Office at nbc.com/theoffice.

8. Mini-massage: Lie on your back and position a tennis ball under the tense points—your lower back, between your shoulder blades, etc. Roll gently up and down and side to side.

9. Soak a hand towel and microwave for two minutes until steamy. Place on back of neck, on face or computer-achy hands.

Quick Stat: Be aware of the top 10 stressors: sick family member, money, your own health, children, work, personal safety, state of the world, terrorism or natural disasters, intimate relationships, discrimination based on race or ethnicity.

10. Power off your computer so the screen goes blank and that ever-present buzz stops. Think of a fantasy place—the beach, the mountains, playing at home with your kids—for five minutes before rebooting.

11. Visit http://www.rd.com/all-cartoons.do for the cartoon (click the cartoon for the full display) of the day.

12. Pick up a bouquet of purple lisianthus and light blue or green hydrangea, which have a calming effect. Place in a glass bowl so you can see the water, and keep it on your desk.

13. Take a punch at the Desktop Speed Bag from Everlast (amazon.com) and pummel away stress as needed.

14. Stare at a picture of Monet’s Water Lilies.

15. Dab lavender body oil on your wrist and sniff a few times.

16. Squirt StressLess mouth spray, packed with passionflower and cinchona, under your tongue three times a day (sprayology.com).

17. Drink green tea—packed with theanine, which increases the brain’s output of relaxation-inducing alpha waves and reduces the output of tension-making beta waves.

18. DIY reflexology: Tap the tips of your fingers together to clear your head. Or, hold one finger at a time between your other thumb and finger and roll the finger like a pencil. Believe it or not, this is thought to relax neck muscles and improve circulation.

19. Play a free version of Bejeweled 2 or Bookwork on popcap.com. Designed by a stress doctor, these games require concentration and focus without violence or adrenaline.

20. Touch a talisman or object that has meaning to you—your grandmother’s crucifix, a shell you found on the beach as a child, a cherished stuffed animal—and let pleasant memories seep in.

21. Quickie yoga: Sitting down, as you inhale, touch your tongue to the roof of your mouth. Exhale, relaxing your tongue. Repeat.

22. Drink a glass of cold water, then go for a walk outside. The water gets your blood moving and the air invigorates by stimulating the endorphins that distress you.

23. Break your focus—stir your coffee backward, close your eyes and hum a song, drink your soda in exactly 24 sips.

24. Log on to theonion.com for hilarious fake newspaper stories.

25. Take a steamy shower with a luxurious gel such as Aveeno Stress Relief Body Wash with lavender, chamomile and ylang-ylang.

26. Mini massage: Starting on the bone directly behind your earlobe, apply gentle pressure with your thumb and forefinger and follow to the top of your ear, two or three times. Then rub briskly.

27. Order black tea instead of coffee. A study by University College London shows that drinking black tea four times a day for six weeks lowered the stress hormone cortisol after a stressful event.

28. Place a heating pad or pack such as ThermaCare HeatWrap underneath clothing on your tight shoulders or lower back.

29. Squeeze a stress ball for two seconds, then release. Once your muscles begin to relax, the tension will slowly go away.

30. Hold your loved one’s hand. Brain scans show the contact provides immediate relief from stress.