Tag: Clinical trials

Cindy Blair wants older cancer survivors to increase their activity levels

The University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center...

The University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center is set to become a hub for pediatric clinical trials, bringing new drugs and therapies to help children.

When Anne Holmes saw her doctor for a nagging pain in her upper arm last year, she learned that cancer cells from a massive tumor on her left kidney had invaded the long bone in her right arm and nearly ate through it. Now Holmes plans to rid her body of all her cancer cells and, at the same time, help others with metastatic kidney cancer. She is the first New Mexican to join a clinical trial that will teach her immune system to fight her cancer cells everywhere.

The University of New Mexico Cancer Center won a 5-year $7 million grant from the National Cancer Institute’s National Community Oncology Research Program. The NCORP grant will strengthen and expand the clinical trials network in New Mexico. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) called the New Mexico NCORP “a model for community-based participatory cancer research” and said that it “is likely to have exceptional impact in clinical trial and cancer care delivery research.”

Equally comfortable in the lab and in the clinic, Dr. Olivier Rixe’s face lights up as he talks about how he brings the discoveries of basic science to his cancer patients. Rixe recently joined the UNM Cancer Center as the associate director for clinical research and will help develop the early phase clinical trials and the neuro-oncology programs.