research

Federal leaders take center stage at Engineering Cancer Solutions mini-symposium

Virginia Tech students and early career researchers engage with top cancer leaders at employee appreciation day at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute Cancer Research Center in Washington, D.C.

John Pastor

12 Jul 2024

Four cancer researchers — (From left) Christopher Hourigan, professor and director of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute Cancer Research Center in D.C.; Kamal Menghrajani, a White House Fellow; Nicole Gormley of the Food and Drug Administration, and Jennifer Couch, a branch chief within the National Cancer Institute, discuss the value of collaborations to address cancer complexity. Photo by John Pastor for Virginia Tech.

The room was humming as three high-level federal leaders – one each from the White House, the National Cancer Institute, and the Food and Drug Administration – mixed with Virginia Tech students, early career researchers and leadership at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute Cancer Research Center in Washington, D.C.

The conclave was a mini-symposium called Engineering Cancer Solutions, organized to show appreciation to Virginia Tech students and employees in the greater Washington, D.C., metro area and to commemorate the start of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute Cancer Research Center — D.C. based at the Children’s National Research & Innovation Campus.

“We really wanted to create a good setting for our people to meet with leaders in the federal government who work in the cancer space, not only to create one-on-one interactions, but also to show these leaders as examples to learn from and to model in their own careers,” said Christopher Hourigan, professor and director of the research institute's Cancer Research Center in D.C.

Kamal Menghrajani, a White House Fellow, talked about President Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative. Jennifer Couch, chief of the Biophysics, Bioengineering, and Computational Sciences Branch of the National Cancer Institute, discussed the value of novel collaborations to address cancer complexity. Nicole Gormley of the Food and Drug Administration talked about progress in and opportunity to use biomarkers such as measurable residual disease testing to further accelerate cancer drug development.

“These phenomenal speakers are examples of the talented, engaged, committed people who are involved in cancer research, and it was a pleasure introducing them to our students and early career researchers,” Hourigan said. “I can't think of a better way to start our Cancer Research Center in Washington, D.C.”

Something extraordinary happened after the formal talks, Hourigan said.

“We didn’t go to traditional questions and answers. Instead, people organically broke into small groups and had really quite meaningful conversations,” said Hourigan, who has moved his own research program from the National Institutes of Health to the Cancer Research Center in D.C., alongside assistant professors Kathleen Mulvaney and Jia-Ray Yu’s labs.

The exchanges were eye-opening for people like Cole Simon, a graduate student in Mulvaney’s lab.

“I saw that science is so broad and that there are so many ways to attack a problem, whether the solution is from the field of biology or through computational work,” Simon said. “Dr. Couch was telling us about game aspects and working with game designers in cancer research – it makes you think about how many possibilities there are.”

Hourigan, formerly the leader of the Laboratory of Myeloid Malignancies in the intramural research program of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health, talked about joining Virginia Tech in April to build a new center in Washington, D.C., complementing the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC Cancer Research Center in Roanoke.

“Cancer is a set of diseases that has impacted, in some way, the vast majority of Americans,” said Hourigan, who is also a professor of internal medicine in the Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine. “One in five deaths in America is due to cancer. We spend over $200 billion a year in the U.S. on cancer care with the patients themselves paying at least a tenth of that. We spend at least $60 billion a year on cancer research and development and what we are doing is working – but not fast enough. Here, we are designing a mission-driven culture of collaboration, urgency, humility, and innovation in the face of this immense challenge in an attempt to break through the hope-and-hype cycle and deliver cancer solutions.”

Students, early career researchers, principal investigators, and administrators gather outside of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute's labs at the Children's National Research & Innovation Campus. Photos by John Pastor for Virginia Tech.