Common Cause

(Left: Gary Kruh, MD, PhD, UIC Cancer Center Director and Interim Chief of the Section of Hematology and Oncology)

Cancer Center Director Gary Kruh Aims to Unite UIC in Translating Research Into Patient Care

“I became interested in cancer because the biology of it is so rich, there are so many questions to be answered and there is so much opportunity for helping patients,” says Gary Kruh, MD, PhD.

The director of the UIC Cancer Center and the interim chief of the section of hematology and oncology at the University of Illinois Medical Center since the fall of 2007, Kruh now is working with researchers from across UIC to help find answers to these questions. In the process, he’s trying to forge the same synthesis of laboratory research and clinical care in the fight against cancer that’s guided his own career for 25 years.

His second-floor office in the Medical Center Administration Building is at the center of Kruh’s effort to unite researchers, educators and clinicians from all six of UIC’s health sciences colleges—Medicine, Applied Health Sciences, Dentistry, Nursing, Pharmacy and the School of Public Health—as well the colleges of Engineering and Liberal Arts and Sciences.

Kruh came to UIC from Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, where he was an attending physician, associate professor in the department of medical oncology and acting head of the pharmacology department. Much of his research has focused on understanding the molecular mechanisms that enable cancer cells to resist chemotherapeutic agents. Understanding these resistance mechanisms may lead to improvements in the use of currently available anti-cancer agents and the development of improved drugs.

As a clinician, Kruh has focused on treatment of lung cancer patients. After earning his PhD in biochemistry and then his MD, both from Baylor College of Medicine, Kruh completed his internship and residency in internal medicine and subspecialty training in medical oncology at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He later carried out postdoctoral training as a medical staff fellow at the National Institutes of Health.

“Having worked at the highly respected Fox Chase Cancer Center, Gary Kruh understands what it takes to develop and maintain an academic and clinically oriented cancer center,” says Joseph Flaherty, MD, dean of the College of Medicine. “He’s very well-respected, and he knows the scientific community very well. He has the ability to work with people and bring out their strengths.”

Secure in job and reputation, Kruh nonetheless was drawn by the opportunities to head the cancer center. “What I liked about UIC was the significant potential for developing into a more robust cancer enterprise,” Kruh says. “The strength of having all these health-related colleges with strong, well-funded laboratories and cancer control research within one university is considerable.”

Kruh is working to unite the efforts of more than 100 laboratory, clinical science and population science researchers who annually receive $25 million in cancer-related, peer-reviewed external grant and contract direct funding, including $15 million from the National Cancer Institute and $8.4 million from other National Institutes of Health.

“On the clinical side, there is a long tradition of high-quality care and an excellent cancer control program,” Kruh adds. He’s particularly enthusiastic about the medical center’s commitment to bringing care to the underserved, as evidenced by UIC being one of 13 institutions in the U.S. to be designated a Minority-Based Community Clinical Oncology Program by the National Cancer Institute. The grant, competitively renewed in 2007 for five years, demonstrates the medical center’s commitment to recruiting and enrolling underserved and minority patients in high-priority, national cooperative protocols in cancer treatment and cancer control.

Kruh also sees room to grow. In the near term, his focus is on establishing core facilities to support the work of cancer researchers. Another goal is to foster research that has clinical relevance. “I want to put more focus on the discoveries in the laboratory being translated into clinical trials that affect patients, and on clinical trials fueling laboratory studies,” he says. Kruh also plans to develop a network of donors and advocates to support the center.

After reviewing the university’s cancer research grant portfolio and consulting with deans, department heads and individual scientists, Kruh reconfigured the cancer center’s research programs into programs focusing on cancer control and population science, carcinogenesis and chemoprevention, experimental therapeutics and imaging, and tumor cell biology. Program leaders were appointed at the end of 2008. At the start of 2009, the programs began to meet monthly, and a weekly cancer center seminar that draws on both cancer center members and outside speakers was launched.

In spring of 2009, Kruh partnered with the departments of medicine and pediatrics to support a new clinic that provides long-term follow-up and management for survivors of childhood cancer who are more than 18 years old and are free of cancer for at least three years. An estimated 10,000 such adult survivors of childhood cancer reside in the Chicagoland area. The clinic is linked to members of the cancer center’s cancer control and population science research program from the colleges of Medicine and Nursing.

While Kruh is working diligently to lay the groundwork for the cancer center, he realizes that its success ultimately will rely on the investigators involved. “You can have an infrastructure, but ultimately it’s dependent upon discoveries by curious cancer researchers,” he says. “The sorts of trials that will be particularly valuable will be the ones that grow out of our own labs.”

Fortunately, his colleagues in other UIC colleges share Kruh’s enthusiasm and his commitment to translational cancer research. At the College of Dentistry, Dean Bruce S. Graham, DDS, has built a team of nine investigators that studies head, neck and oral cancers. “It’s more common than melanoma, and it has not been well-researched or well-addressed,” Graham says. “Dr. Kruh and I have high hopes that this will be a major component of our cancer center.”

Kruh’s arrival also has stirred enthusiasm on UIC’s east side of campus. “There are many promising new tools and technologies that the College of Engineering can bring to cancer research,” says Richard L. Magin, PhD, head of the department of bioengineering. “The cancer center is going to provide the avenue for our researchers to make great contributions.”

“We’re extremely fortunate to have someone with his scientific credentials and organizational skills,” says Jerry L. Bauman, PharmD, dean of the College of Pharmacy, where cancer research is a major focus. “If anybody can lead this effort, it will be him.”