Cancer crusader targets lethal infection

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Cancer crusader targets lethal infection

Sun-Sentinel.com - Fort Lauderdale,FL*

Staff report

November 6, 2007

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/features/health/sfl-

fljjpscancer1106jjpnnov06,0,4083146.story

Ask Dr. Wingard what he thinks when he hears the word fungus,

and he'll probably tell you it's not mushrooms and mold that leap to

mind. That's because he is spearheading a $9 million federally

funded effort that puts the University of Florida on the map as the

nation's first research repository for one species that has nothing

to do with pizza toppings or marbling blue cheese: aspergillus, an

increasing health threat to cancer patients and transplant

recipients.

Wingard, director of UF's blood and marrow transplant program and

deputy director of the UF Shands Cancer Center, is collaborating

with colleagues at collection sites at Duke University, Brigham and

Women's Hospital in Boston and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, who

will funnel patients' respiratory, urine and blood samples to UF.

The repository will support research aimed at learning more about

the fungus — the leading cause of death from infection in bone

marrow transplant and leukemia patients, as well as among those who

receive certain other solid organ transplants - and support efforts

to develop new, more accurate tests to detect it in patients.

The effort is just the latest in a string of success stories the

native of ton, S.C., has amassed during his career. Wingard's

research has led to new therapies for patients undergoing

hematopoietic cell transplantation, which involves the use of blood

stem cells to treat those with cancer and other blood and immune

system disorders. He also is studying the role these cells may

sometimes play in the formation of cancer, and he is continuing to

evaluate the use of cord blood and other types of adult stem cells

to treat the disease.

As one of a cadre of UF scientists who have marshaled their forces

in the fight against cancer, he acknowledges that the disease is

formidable, and progress has sometimes been slower than he'd like.

Yet progress is being made.

" When I started there were only three dozen cancer drugs. Today

there are nearly 150 FDA-approved cancer drugs, more than one-third

receiving FDA approval in just the past five years, " says Wingard,

also the Price chair of medicine at UF's College of Medicine. " There

now are two licensed vaccines to prevent cancer. In the last several

years, the cancer death rate in the U.S. has finally stopped rising

and started to fall at last. "

Much of his motivation comes from personal experience. As a young

medical student, his first patient was a man dying of lung cancer.

Wingard spent days at the man's side, witnessing the suffering he

experienced struggling to get his breath and sharing his wife's

grief.

" I felt so helpless, not being able to do something meaningful, "

Wingard says. " It brought back to me the raw feelings of

helplessness I experienced as a 14-year-old as my grandfather died

of bladder cancer. I resolved then to try, in whatever way I could,

to alleviate the suffering, to help find some way to beat back the

fear and suffering that cancer brings to too many lives. "

For lasting advances to occur, treatments need to reach the people

who most need them.

" Florida has the second-highest rate of cancer in the U.S., " he

says. " To best serve the health needs of our citizens, we need to be

developing and testing the drugs of tomorrow and offering the best

and latest therapies to our patients today. "