In 2009, Osama Rahma, MD, was settling in to the National Institutes of Health as part of a team that focused on the development of cancer vaccines and the emerging field of cancer immunotherapy. It was a time when the interaction between the immune system and cancer cells was just starting to become clear.

“We were pretty naïve in thinking that you can just stimulate these immune cells by injecting the vaccine with a specific target in patients and try to stimulate the immune response,” he recalls, “but later on we started learning about what we now call immune checkpoint inhibitors. Those are more powerful drugs that actually target the break in the immune system and unleash the immune system to attack the cancer cells.”

Six years later, Dr. Rahma is now an assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Hematology/Oncology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, and the promise of immunotherapy has begun to bear fruit.

Dr. Rahma came to the NIH after earning his medical degree at Damascus University, and completing his residency in internal medicine at East Carolina University and fellowship training in geriatric medicine at the University of Hawaii.

His experience at the NIH, and a subsequent hematology/oncology fellowship at the National Cancer Institute, laid the foundation for his current role in leading the translational research program in pancreatic and hepatobiliary cancers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. In this role, he has guided the development of clinical trials including a study of an immune modulator that targets the PD-1 receptor in pancreatic tumors. Dr. Rahma is currently developing a multi-center clinical trial with Hoosier Cancer Research Network (HCRN) that will combine standard chemoradiation with an anti PD-1 inhibitor in rectal cancer.

HCRN recently honored Dr. Rahma with the 2015 Danny Danielson Translational Innovation Award for his contributions to clinical research.

The award was created in 2013 by Donald C. “Danny” Danielson (pictured) and is granted twice each year through the Walther Cancer Foundation to investigators working in partnership with Hoosier Cancer Research Network. The award supports the correlative components of clinical trial protocols when financial support is not otherwise available.

Dr. Rahma said the $10,000 funding provided by the award could be complementary to his HCRN study in rectal cancer, helping to identify potential biomarkers for response. The funds could also be used for pre-clinical or translational studies on banked tissue samples from patients with cholangiocarcinoma or other GI malignances, he said.

Identifying targets that predict response can have implications that extend beyond individual cancer types. Indeed, Dr. Rahma said, this is where the field of immunotherapy is heading, with the advent of basket trials.

“The concept of the basket trial is to treat tumors not based on the tumor site but based on the genomic sequencing, mutations, and expression of certain targets,” he said. “So we look at tumors not as GI tumors or thoracic tumors or GU tumors, but rather as one entity based on what they express and what pathways might be targeted.”

As immunotherapy continues to mature, Dr. Rahma believes it will become a key part of a multimodality approach to cancer therapy.

“In the future, we’re probably going to see cytotoxic chemotherapy and radiation therapy being used to mainly decrease the bulk of the tumor and allow other modalities to take effect — to use it as a complement to what may work better, which is personalized, targeted treatment that targets certain driver mutations, pathways, or immune receptors in the tumor,” he said.

About Hoosier Cancer Research Network:

Hoosier Cancer Research Network (formerly known as Hoosier Oncology Group) conducts innovative cancer research in collaboration with academic and community physicians and scientists across the United States. The organization provides comprehensive clinical trial management and support, from conception through publication. Created in 1984 as a program of the Walther Cancer Institute, Hoosier Cancer Research Network became an independent nonprofit clinical research organization in 2007. Since its founding, Hoosier Cancer Research Network has initiated more than 150 trials in a variety of cancer types and supportive care, resulting in more than 300 publications. More than 4,600 subjects have participated in Hoosier Cancer Research Network clinical trials.