'Groundbreaking stuff' at Hampton University

HAMPTON

Cierra Moss hasn't graduated from college yet, but she already holds the distinguished title of "cancer fellow," and she hopes to pursue her dream of becoming a pediatric oncologist.

The 21-year-old is among a group of students at Hampton University studying the disease as part of a cancer curriculum. Like many of her peers, Moss is driven not just by career goals but by a personal connection. She lost her mother to the disease.

That connection to cancer, which disproportionately afflicts and kills black people, has fueled a drive by Hampton University to be on the cutting edge of research and treatment.

There are signs the effort is working.

In the past three years, Hampton University has obtained more than $4.2 million in National Institutes of Health grants, considered the gold standard for medical research. That's more than any other non-medical college in the region, including Old Dominion University, Norfolk State University and the College of William and Mary, according to NIH records.

Researchers working at its Center for Advanced Medical Instrumentation have earned at least nine patents for cancer

detection and treatment devices. Hampton also offers the state's only medical physics program, which includes the physics of radiation therapy and clinical rotations.

Perhaps the most visible sign of the university's commitment to cancer research and treatment is the $200 million proton therapy center under construction in an office park in Hampton. The center, one of a handful in the country and the only one in Virginia, is scheduled to begin treating patients in 2010.

Proton therapy is a type of cancer treatment that offers the effectiveness of conventional radiation and chemotherapy treatments without as many side effects. B ecause of the massive equipment and special facility needs involved with delivering the therapy, it's an expensive endeavor. Hampton's financing for the center, largely through tax-exempt bonds, is being handled by JPMorgan Chase and BB&T.

The proton therapy institute, in particular, has become the passion of Hampton University President William Harvey. He called it a natural evolution from the work the school's researchers already were doing.

It "heightened awareness to me, and I happen to be a decision maker who can make things happen. It would not have entered my mind if we weren't already doing some very good research," said Harvey, who in 30 years of leadership at the historically black university has increased its endowment from $29 million to more than $200 million.

The proton therapy center will be a recruiting draw for top scientific and medical talent, said William Wasilenko, associate dean for research at Eastern Virginia Medical School.

Although Hampton University doesn't have a medical school, its strength in nuclear physics makes it a natural location for a proton therapy center, Wasilenko said. Hampton's medical physicists and radiation oncologists from EVMS will work together to research how best to harness the new technology.

"It's all groundbreaking stuff," Wasilenko said.

One of the more common uses of proton therapy is in the treatment of prostate cancer, which kills black men in United States at more than twice the rate it kills white men, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While white women are at greater risk to develop breast cancer, black women are more likely to die from the disease, and, across the major cancer categories, mortality rates are higher for blacks than whites.

"You see improvements as income goes up, but you still see the disparities by race and ethnicity," said Dr. Michael Royster, director of the Office of Minority Health and Public Health Policy at the Virginia Department of Health. "There are still a lot of unanswered questions about the differences."

Harvey called those disparities "a plague on our race," but he said that addressing them is not the impetus of Hampton's research program.

Part of Hampton University's initiative includes an undergraduate cancer curriculum, which is open to all students. The courses are team-taught via videoconference with researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute. Hampton's cancer fellows worked at the Pittsburgh center during the summers doing research.

That program is funded by a 2003 grant from the National Cancer Institute. In the fall, Hampton received a $440,000 grant to add more classes and to further cancer research at the university's School of Pharmacy.

The goal of the program is to "increase the number of minority scientists in cancer research with the hope that this will help reduce cancer health disparities," said Cecile Andraos-Selim, associate professor of biological sciences. "Once you know how it starts and how it develops you can find ways to treat it."

She said the cancer courses have been popular with students in part because the cancer statistics aren't just statistics to them: They know people with cancer.

The classes teach about the biology of cancer, but they also work to dispel common myths, including the idea that surgery on the cancer will spread the cancer, Andraos-Selim said. The hope is that, regardless of whether they become cancer researchers, the students will share what they've learned with their families and communities.

Moss, a senior from Decatur, Ga., is excited by what she has learned. She easily tosses around terms such as apoptosis and "testing the Bcl-2 family proteins," when describing her research last summer on ways to kill cancer cells.

"It started with my family," Moss said. "If I could learn how cancer works and why things happen instead of being upset that cancer is around... maybe I could come to terms with what happened."

Nancy Young, (757) 446-2947, nancy.young@pilotonline.com