James Graham Brown

Transcription

Kentucky’s a wonderful state. It’s a beautiful state, but it’s been a tobacco state, and because of that our deaths from lung cancer have been almost 50% greater than the rest of the country. We still have a major public health problem with cancer in Kentucky. Thirty years ago our community had an amazing vision, and that is better quality of life for people who are suffering from cancer. And so our focus at the University of Louisville and our focus at the James Graham Brown Cancer Center is to do something about that. Cancer treatment has changed a lot over the years. We used to treat it at the cellular level, now we treat it more at the molecular level. Dr. Miller has organized a group in the western part of this state where tobacco can be changed into a vaccine. Who ever thought they’d be using tobacco for a vaccine. Well this is really 21st Century science that’s happening here. Most of the research enterprise in the United States and the Western World Is focused on curing cancer in mice. This cancer center is really focused on curing cancer in humans. To be able to use the tobacco plant, which is a cause of cancer, to help find cures to cancer; it is a beautiful irony. It’s almost like fate that the plant that brought us the most health problems is the plant that’s going to save the most lives. We can now vaccinate thousands more people. The affordability is becoming more positive so we can save more lives nationwide now, worldwide now, and it all came from here. In the old days, if you had a target that you wanted to inhibit, what you would do is go into the basement and look around for chemicals and then see if those chemicals would inhibit the enzyme. But we took a totally different approach. We worked with a computational modelist named John Trent. Doctor Trent applied his background in organic chemistry to curing cancer, and the way he’s doing that is by using the amazing processing power of computers. We first started doing computational drug discovery in 2002. And then we had a chance meeting with DataSim. Brian Gupton of DataSim came to me and said I’ve got a crazy idea. And it was a crazy idea, but it was a phenomenal idea that’s having an incredible impact across our state in so many ways. The modern computer, these Imax, are very powerful machines. The schools directly benefit by getting State of the Art technology. And in the school environment, they are used 20-30% of the time. That means that 70-80% of the time it’s not being used. machine in this room to do cancer track discovery. We are using those times, and we are getting the power of every single A typical cancer track discovery run takes about 300 years on one computer. But using these school computers, 10,000 of them, we can do that in two or three days. The Cancer Center is about treatment research, but more importantly outreach in education as well. Having the technology in a small place like this has enabled us to change a lot of lives. One of the projects is Tech Tales, and Tech Tales is where they’ve taken children’s stories, hey’ve used Garage Band on the [I]Macs to create audio books, and from this they’ve fundraised, bought IPods, and put their stories on the IPods to send to kids in the clinical trials at the Cancer Center. And it’s really been kind of neat to see them come full circle until they’re giving back to kids using the same technology that was used to develop the drugs. We’ve tried at every point to provide the infrastructure and assistance the scientists need to move as quickly as possible. In doing that, we’ve created an urgency that comes from our patients that we desperately need better treatments, and we need them last week. What goes on in the Research Arena is extremely important, and we’ve seen so many medical advances and cancer care. The other component to that is the care of the patient and the care that the staff gives the patient. Research doesn’t necessarily give a hug, doesn’t know their name. So the combination of the two make the healing process what it should be. Cancer is unlike any other disease. The chemotherapy and the radiation is so difficult, and to have a caring compassionate medical staff, the doctors, the nurses, the technicians, really makes all the difference in world so that we can be a world class cancer center. Well it took them one day to know what I had, and it was the size of a golf ball. So my doctor went to the head of M.D. Anderson, the head of Duke, the head of Indiana, and the advice was the same everywhere. Why would you come here if you have Brown Cancer Center there? The entire staff here treats patients with a lot of dignity, with a lot of respect, and a lot of care. And that’s why there are so many success stories that come out of here. What really stood out the most is that I went to a Cancer Spiritual Retreat. That little hole I had in my heart, it’s not there anymore. After that retreat, it brought me back to my roots, to let me know that I’m not alone, that there is somebody out there that’s going through the same thing that I’m going through. And I hope the message that I pull off today, that it touches somebody else’s heart like it did me. There’s another dimension of this which is important also, and that is this is a good industry for our community. When the Brown Cancer Center had developed its funding to the levels that we enjoy now which is in excess of $40, maybe $50 million. That is money that is spent in this community. The economists would say that that may translate into $100 million of economic impact. We think it plays an extraordinary role in making Louisville well equipped to provide 21st Century jobs. The Brown Cancer Center is a special place. It was originally a dream of the community that has come to reality. But we’re still small and we need to grow. If we are to make a true difference to the people of Kentucky who have cancer, then we need additional scientists, additional clinicians, and the infrastructure to provide the best clinical care and the best translational research in the country. We’ve done some remarkable things at the University of Louisville and the James Graham Brown Cancer Center, the data scene, our using the tobacco plant to create cancer drugs, things that no one would’ve ever thought were possible. And to continue to move forward with these crazy ideas that are truly making a difference in the quality of life for the people of our community and state, we need our donors, our alumni, our friends, the people of this community to step forward and say they can do it at the University of Louisville. I’m going to invest in the James Graham Brown Cancer Center.