The Sandra Turner Excellence in Clinical Research Award was established in 2002 by Dr. William B. Fisher through the George and Sarah Jane Fisher Fund to honor the memory of Sandra Turner, the first executive director of Hoosier Cancer Research Network. Each year the organization selects individuals for the award who exemplify the qualities Sandra possessed and respected in others, such as sustained professional commitment, contribution to the progress of oncology care, and the unflinching touch of compassion.

Stacey Richardson, RN, BSN, was honored as a recipient of the Sandra Turner Excellence in Clinical Research Award in 2016. Richardson is a clinical research coordinator with Community Health Network. Her story illustrates how a spark of compassion becomes a flame.

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Hoosier Cancer Research Network, formerly known as Hoosier Oncology Group, recently honored Olumide Gbolahan, MD, as the 2016 recipient of the George and Sarah Jane Fisher Young Investigator Award.

Dr. Gbolahan grew up in Nigeria where his interest in medicine took root in high school. “My aptitude was really more toward the health sciences, biology core sciences,” he said. “I found myself moving in the direction of medicine. Once I found myself in medicine, I did not see that I could do anything else.” Read More

This spring, Hoosier Cancer Research Network Chairman Christopher A. Fausel, PharmD, invited friends and colleagues to join him in a unique challenge called Reps for Research. For the third consecutive year, Fausel added value to his participation in the Arnold Sports Festival’s 5K Pump and Run event, held March 5 in Columbus, Ohio, by inviting pledges in support of HCRN for every bench press repetition he completed.

Twenty-eight donors answered the challenge, contributing a total of $3,315 as Fausel successfully completed 30 repetitions during the event. Since 2015, Reps for Research has raised more than $8,000 toward innovative cancer research. This funding strengthens HCRN’s ability to support investigator-initiated clinical trials and correlative research that can lead to direct clinical benefit.

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Serving others has been a lifetime calling for Cara Ellis. As a child, her parents taught her to appreciate what she had and to make the most of every opportunity. “I remember my father saying that he would love for his children to do some type of work where we are helping others,” Ellis recalls.

Hoosier Cancer Research Network (HCRN) recently honored Ellis, a clinical research coordinator at IU Health Central Indiana Cancer Centers, with the Sandra Turner Excellence in Clinical Research Award.

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For the third consecutive year, Hoosier Cancer Research Network chairman Christopher A. Fausel, PharmD, is combining his passion for investigator-initiated research with his annual participation in the Arnold Sports Festival Pump & Run 5K in Columbus, Ohio.

Fausel has participated in the annual strength and endurance event for several years, and is inviting pledges in support of Hoosier Cancer Research Network (HCRN) for every bench press “rep” he completes (maximum of 30) during the event on Sunday, March 5, 2017. Read More

For more than four decades, William B. Fisher, MD, a medical oncologist at the IU Health Ball Memorial Hospital Cancer Center, has served cancer patients, their families, and the community of East Central Indiana. Dr. Fisher was one of six oncologists who founded Hoosier Cancer Research Network (known then as the Hoosier Oncology Group) in the mid 1980s, and served as its founding vice chair. He has remained a strong supporter of the vision for collaborative research to expand patient access to clinical trials throughout the state of Indiana and beyond. In honor of his longstanding commitment, HCRN recently presented Dr. Fisher with the organization’s first-ever Lifetime Achievement Award during an event in Indianapolis. Read More

Columbus North High School in Columbus, Ind., will host the 2016 Courage to Climb concert on Saturday, Aug. 13, at 7 p.m. in the high school’s Erne Auditorium.

The annual benefit concert, now in its seventh year, honors Columbus North choir director and cancer survivor Janie Gordon. Tickets are $15 at the door. Proceeds from the concert will benefit Hoosier Cancer Research Network, a nonprofit clinical research organization in Indianapolis.

Diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009, Gordon broke the news to her students during rehearsal for their summer musical production. Despite their shock, three students wanted to do something to help. They secretly planned a concert in honor of Gordon and named the event “Courage to Climb,” based on a motto Gordon had adopted for her battle against cancer.

Gordon was just beginning chemotherapy when the concert was held. She recalls her initial reaction when she walked in and saw the auditorium decorated in pink. Read More

Hoosier Cancer Research Network Chairman Christopher A. Fausel, PharmD, has again and again raised the bar in the fight against cancer – literally. This spring, he reissued his unique challenge to friends and supporters of HCRN: the Reps for Research challenge. Combining his interest in strength training and his passion for investigator-initiated research, Fausel invited pledges for every bench-press “rep” he could complete at the Arnold Sports Festival’s 5K Pump and Run event in Columbus, Ohio.

“Each repetition generates a donation to the fund of the Hoosier Cancer Research Network,” said Fausel. At the largest event of its kind and flanked by competitors from across the country, Fausel lifted up more than weights, but also the cause of innovative clinical trials in oncology. “We are looking to partner with physicians, not only in Indiana, but throughout the United States, to come up with important clinical studies for many different types of cancer research.”

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“For a long time, I think we’ve tended to treat these two spaces separately, the basic science space and then the clinical space,” said John Paul Flores, MD, fellow at the Tufts University School of Medicine. Keenly aware of the relationship between patient care and basic science, Flores found in oncology a profound union of these two disciplines; a union that drew him to the field and informs his innovative work.

“I went into medical school, I started treating patients, and I realized I liked more of the patient-treating aspects than the basic science aspects. I also realized that, in lots of medicine, we didn’t really use any of that basic science that I had learned and that had attracted me to the field in the first place. But then, through internal medicine, I realized that oncology is actually a good combination of all of those interests. Part of it is patient care, and there is a huge responsibility when it comes to treating cancer patients; it is something that changes a patient’s life entirely. And at the same time, there is constant research and innovation going on. Any understanding of that requires a good appreciation of the basic sciences. So, it was a good mix of my two interests: basic science and treating patients.”

This past December, Flores was honored as a recipient of the Danny Danielson Translational Innovation Award. In 2013, Donald C. “Danny” Danielson established the award, granted by the Walther Cancer Foundation.

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Hirva Mamdani, MD, embodies one of the most powerful, human forces in the fight against cancer: curiosity.

Her inquisitive nature surfaced early in the fertile soil of her upbringing. “I grew up in a family of physicians, so I always saw my dad and siblings working very hard, taking care of patients, and making them feel better,” Dr. Mamdani says. “As you can imagine, I was little, so it kind of started out as a curiosity: How can they know so much about the human body, and how can they cure them of their illnesses?”

Dr. Mamdani recalls her dissatisfaction with what she first learned about cancer. “I learned it’s something for which nobody can offer any treatment, and once a person has it, you’re just bound to lose them. I was asking questions to my dad: ‘Dad, you’re a doctor. Can’t you treat cancer?’ That curiosity turned into an ambition to go into the field of medicine.”

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A native Hoosier, William Ian Towler is the Regulatory Manager for the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center. “My job is to make sure we function as smoothly as possible,” Towler says.

[Photo: Ian Towler (left) and HCRN co-founder and William B. Fisher, MD.]

The breadth of Towler’s impact is as wide as his responsibility. “My group is responsible for all the IRB submissions, all the ClinicalTrials.gov submissions, all the FDA IND submissions; so anything that might have a regulatory body, we are responsible for making sure we get them in on time and appropriately.”

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Hoosier Cancer Research Network chairman Christopher A. Fausel, PharmD, is once again combining his passion for investigator-initiated research with his annual participation in the Arnold Sports Festival Pump & Run 5K in Columbus, Ohio.

Fausel has participated in the annual strength and endurance event for several years, and is inviting pledges in support of Hoosier Cancer Research Network (HCRN) for every bench press “rep” he completes (maximum of 30) during the event on Sunday, March 6. Read More

In the dark world of cancer, there are those who shine like bright beacons of hope and guidance for many. Hoosier Cancer Research Network (HCRN) annually recognizes the role that spirited patient advocates and champions of oncological progress fill through the Terry Hoeppner Patient Advocacy Award, named in memory of beloved Indiana University football coach Terry Hoeppner, who died from brain cancer in 2007. The award honors individuals who exhibit Coach Hep’s spirit and determination to champion their cause.

HCRN recently honored Diane Zipursky Quale with the award in recognition of her long-standing support for cancer research and patient advocacy. President and co-founder of Bladder Cancer Advocacy Network (BCAN), Quale has been a champion of the bladder cancer community for more than 10 years.  Her story of uncommon determination reflects the characteristic spirit of her late husband, attorney John Quale, and of Coach Hep, two men who “never quit.” Read More

Around six years ago, Stephen Glick was a businessman, a manager of supply chains in manufacturing. Today, he is a regulatory affairs specialist at IU Health Goshen Center for Cancer Care. His personal journey from one professional world to the next is the story of compassion forging sustained professional commitment that contributes to progress in oncological care.

[Photo: Stephen Glick (right) and HCRN’s Senior Clinical Regulatory Manager, Lucienne Augustin.]

“There came a time when I felt the need to do something completely different,” Glick recalls. “I felt like I really wanted to do something in healthcare instead of the business world. Healthcare had some new meaning for me.”

Glick found that “new meaning” through his own intimate encounters with clinical oncology. “I was influenced by the fact that my wife is a breast cancer survivor.” He remembers “going to the infusion room and talking to the other cancer patients that were there and seeing the real-life struggles.” Read More

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. Read More

The Indiana Department of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Auxiliary (formerly known as the Ladies Auxiliary to the VFW) recently donated more than $14,500 to Hoosier Cancer Research Network. The generous gift is just one example of the VFW Auxiliary’s long-standing support for cancer research.

For more than 100 years, the VFW Auxiliary has served American veterans and active duty service members through a variety of programs, including Cancer Aid and Research. Each of its 4,500 local auxiliaries participates in raising funds toward the program. With more than 465,000 members nationwide, the impact is significant. Read More

Columbus North High School in Columbus, Ind., will host the 2015 Courage to Climb concert on Saturday, Aug. 15, at 7:00 p.m. in the high school’s Erne Auditorium. The annual benefit concert — tickets are $15 at the door — honors Columbus North choir director and cancer survivor Janie Gordon.

Diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009, Gordon broke the news to her students during rehearsal for their summer musical production. Despite their shock, three students wanted to do something to help. They secretly planned a benefit concert in honor of Gordon and named the event “Courage to Climb,” based on a motto Gordon had adopted for her battle against cancer. She was just beginning chemotherapy when the concert was held. “It was an incredibly spirit-lifting experience that really helped pull me through,” she recalls. Read More

Those who follow the trends in modern cancer research know we have entered a new era of discovery. The old strategy of indiscriminately attacking the body to rid it of cancerous cells is giving way to more targeted approaches to treating disease.

E. Gabriela Chiorean, MD, associate professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine and recipient of the 2014 Danny Danielson Translational Innovation Award, has been steadily gathering tumor samples and blood through clinical studies she has conducted. Biospecimens such as these, collected from consenting patients, are crucial for investigators to learn more about the biomarkers that fuel the development of specific cancers.

Correlative studies built around these biospecimens can help scientists learn why some patients respond to treatment while others do not, and in turn, better predict which patients will be good candidates for specific therapies. Read More

This spring, Hoosier Cancer Research Network Chairman Christopher A. Fausel, PharmD, offered a unique challenge to friends and supporters of HCRN. Combining his interest in strength training and his passion for investigator-initiated research, Fausel invited pledges for every bench-press “rep” he could complete at the Arnold Sports Festival’s 5K Pump and Run event in Columbus, Ohio.

Twenty individuals responded with pledges of support for the Reps for Research challenge. Fausel reached his goal of 30 reps during the event (see video), and HCRN received donations totaling more than $1,800 for investigator-initiated research.
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Gregory A. Durm, MD, a hematology/oncology fellow at the Indiana University School of Medicine, is helping to break new ground in the fight against cancer by studying circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in lung cancer.

CTCs are cells that have broken away from primary tumors and have entered into the bloodstream. CTCs that survive the bloodstream’s assault could migrate to distant parts of the body where they can become the seeds of metastatic disease. Technologies to detect CTCs have improved in recent years, in part through collaborative multi-institutional efforts such as a parallel flow micro-aperture chip system developed and tested by Purdue University engineers and investigators at the IU Simon Cancer Center. Read More