12/13/2023
The 3rd Annual Philip A. Salem M.D. Oncology Lecture was held last month. The presenter this year of the 3rd annual Philip A. Salem M.D. Oncology Lecture was Pavan Reddy, M.D., director of the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center at Baylor College of Medicine.
In addition to being the director of the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer, Dr. Reddy is senior associate dean of cancer programs and holds an executive physician leadership role in all oncology services, research, and strategic growth at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center.
As a physician-scientist, Dr. Reddy does both bench and translational research. His work is focused on understanding the role of immune cells in blood diseases, cancer, and transplantation. His groundbreaking research is supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and other foundations
In the laboratory, Dr. Reddy focuses on the immunobiology of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), a devastating immune response that can occur following a stem cell or bone marrow transplant in which the newly transplanted donor cells attack the transplant recipient’s body.
Prior to his appointment in September 2022, as director of the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer, Dr. Reddy was chief of the Division of Hematology/Oncology and deputy director of the Rogel Cancer Center at the University of Michigan.
In this year’s lecture, Dr. Reddy spoke about the value of comprehensive cancer centers, noting that the there are two comprehensive cancer centers in Houston which are sponsored by the National Cancer Institute. These are the Dan Duncan Comprehensive Center and the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.
He also spoke about what features make that make a cancer center comprehensive, which include innovative patient care, cutting edge research that spans from basic to clinical to community research and training next generation of cancer physicians and researchers. He discussed how the Dan Duncan Cancer Center is at the forefront of those activities and is a national leader. He showed how work from the center contributed to practice changing clinical care in the development of CAR T Cell therapy, breast cancer, gastrointestinal cancer and stem cell transplantation. He also shared the arc of his own research in understanding the fundamental of immune response and how that can be leveraged and translated into human trials to mitigate graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), a potentially fatal complication of a allogeneic stem cell transplantation that limits the use of this potentially curative therapy against many blood cancers like leukemias and lymphomas.
