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Surgery for early prostate cancer may not save lives

A major 20-year study provides further evidence that prostate cancer surgery offers negligible benefits to many men with early-stage disease. In such men, who account for most cases of newly diagnosed prostate cancer, surgery did not prolong life and often caused serious complications such as infection, urinary incontinence and erectile dysfunction.

The study, by a national research team including Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, was led by the Minneapolis Veterans Administration Health Care System. It is published July 13 in The New England Journal of Medicine.

In men with early prostate cancer, the study compared surgery with observation. With the latter, men only were treated if they developed bothersome symptoms, such as urinary difficulty or bone pain. Such symptoms may indicate progression of the cancer. Many men in the observation group received no treatment at all because early-stage prostate cancer often grows slowly and rarely causes symptoms.

“The findings will go a long way in helping to improve prostate cancer care,” said co-author Gerald L. Andriole, MD, director of Washington University’s Division of Urologic Surgery. “About 70 percent of patients newly diagnosed with prostate cancer cases are in the early stages, meaning the cancer is confined to the prostate gland, and they have nonaggressive tumors. As such, these patients have an excellent prognosis without surgery. This study confirms that aggressive treatment usually is not necessary. We hope the findings will steer doctors away from recommending surgery or radiation to their patients with nonaggressive early-stage prostate cancer and patients away from thinking it’s necessary.”

The American Cancer Society ranks prostate cancer as the second most common cancer in men and the third-leading cause of cancer deaths among men, after lung and colorectal cancer. In 2017, about 161,360 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, and 26,730 will die from it.

The study, known as the Prostate Cancer Intervention Versus Observation Trial, or PIVOT, is one of the largest and longest involving cancer patients. It got underway in 1994 just as the prostate-specific antigen blood test for prostate cancer became routine. With many more men diagnosed with prostate cancer, the standard treatment for all prostate cancers became surgery or radiation, with the thinking that removing or irradiating the tumor would increase survival. But over the next decade, reports of treatment-related complications raised concerns, as did data indicating that most early-stage cancers grew so slowly they were unlikely to cause health problems.

To evaluate any potential benefits of surgery, the researchers randomly assigned 731 men in the U.S. with localized prostate cancer to receive either surgery or observation at one of 44 Department of Veteran Affairs Health Care Centers or eight academic medical centers, including Washington University.

The average age of men in the study was 67 at the time of enrollment.

Of the men who had prostate cancer surgery, 223 (61 percent) died of other causes after up to 20 years of follow-up, compared with 245 men (66 percent) in the observation group – a difference that is not statistically different. Further, 27 (7 percent) men in the surgery group died of prostate cancer, compared with 42 men (11 percent) in the observation group, but that difference also is not statistically significant.

However, the data show that surgery may have a mortality benefit in some men, particularly those with a long life expectancy and intermediate-risk prostate cancer. (Such men generally have PSA scores of 10-20 ng/ml and a Gleason score of seven. The latter score signifies tumor aggressiveness.)

“It would be a disservice to dismiss surgery as a viable option for patients with intermediate-risk prostate cancer,” said Andriole, the School of Medicine’s Robert K. Royce Distinguished Professor of Urologic Surgery. He treats patients at Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University. “For these patients, and for some men with high-risk prostate cancer, surgery is often beneficial, as are other other treatments such as radiation.”

Technology has advanced since the study began, allowing physicians to more accurately classify tumors and avoid overtreating patients who have prostate cancer.

Of the 364 men treated with surgery, 53 (15 percent) suffered from erectile dysfunction, and 63 (17 percent) reported having incontinence. Another 45 developed other complications.

“The benefits of surgery also need to be balanced against the negative long-term consequences of surgery that occur early and often,” said senior author Timothy Wilt, MD, a physician-researcher with the Center for Chronic Disease Outcomes Research at the Minneapolis VA Health Care System and a professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota. “Our results demonstrate that for the majority of men with localized prostate cancer, selecting observation for their treatment choice can help them live a similar length of life, avoid death from prostate cancer and prevent harms from surgical treatment. Physicians can use information from our study to confidently recommend observation as the preferred treatment option for men with early prostate cancer.”

Director of Cancer Biology Division named

Julie K. Schwarz, MD, PhD, an associate professor of radiation oncology, has been named director of the Cancer Biology Division in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Schwarz is a leading physician-scientist focused on understanding the biology of cervical cancer. In an effort to provide the best possible care for her patients, she studies cervical tumor metabolism, radiographic imaging of those tumors and ways to use radiation and chemotherapy to attack these types of cancer cells.

“Dr. Schwarz is a superb research scientist and an excellent physician, leading the way in working to better understand cervical cancer, so that more effective treatments can be brought to the clinic,” said Dennis E. Hallahan, MD, the Elizabeth H. and James S. McDonnell III Distinguished Professor of Medicine and head of the Department of Radiation Oncology. “Her strengths, talents and expertise were precisely what we were looking for in leadership for the Cancer Biology Division.”

Washington University is a national leader in radiation oncology, developing standard protocols and quality-assessment tools used by radiation therapy centers across the country. Schwarz said she and her colleagues in the division are particularly interested in pursuing research into new ways to combine radiation therapy with the latest tools and strategies being harnessed against cancer, including immunotherapy, tumor metabolism and bioinformatics.

“It is my great pleasure to work with the outstanding faculty in the department and to seek new ways to collaborate with our esteemed colleagues in the wider research community at Washington University,” said Schwarz, who sees patients at Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine.

“We have tremendous resources in our department, including tissue banks with tumor samples and blood samples, clinical data from the patients who gave those samples, and radiographic images of their tumors,” she added. “The potential to put all these big data resources together and ask fundamental questions about radiation therapy efficacy — including how it may be combined with the latest chemotherapies, immunotherapies or metabolic therapies against tumors — is a really exciting opportunity.”

After earning a bachelor’s degree in biology from Duke University in 1995, Schwarz came to Washington University, where she joined the Medical Scientist Training Program. She earned a medical degree and a doctorate in cell and molecular biology in 2004. Schwarz continued her training with an internship and residency at Washington University and Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

Schwarz joined the faculty in 2009. Her laboratory research is supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Radiological Society of North America.

Zika virus kills brain cancer stem cells

While Zika virus causes devastating damage to the brains of developing fetuses, it one day may be an effective treatment for glioblastoma, a deadly form of brain cancer. New research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of California San Diego School of Medicine shows that the virus kills brain cancer stem cells, the kind of cells most resistant to standard treatments.

The findings suggest that the lethal power of the virus – known for infecting and killing cells in the brains of fetuses, causing babies to be born with tiny, misshapen heads – could be directed at malignant cells in the brain. Doing so potentially could improve people’s chances against a brain cancer – glioblastoma – that is most often fatal within a year of diagnosis.

“We showed that Zika virus can kill the kind of glioblastoma cells that tend to be resistant to current treatments and lead to death,” said Michael S. Diamond, MD, PhD, the Herbert S. Gasser Professor of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine and the study’s co-senior author.

The findings are published Sept. 5 in The Journal of Experimental Medicine.

Each year in the United States, about 12,000 people are diagnosed with glioblastoma, the most common form of brain cancer. Among them is U.S. Sen. John McCain, who announced his diagnosis in July.

The standard treatment is aggressive – surgery, followed by chemotherapy and radiation – yet most tumors recur within six months. A small population of cells, known as glioblastoma stem cells, often survives the onslaught and continues to divide, producing new tumor cells to replace the ones killed by the cancer drugs.

In their neurological origins and near-limitless ability to create new cells, glioblastoma stem cells reminded postdoctoral researcher Zhe Zhu, PhD, of neuroprogenitor cells, which generate cells for the growing brain. Zika virus specifically targets and kills neuroprogenitor cells.

In collaboration with co-senior authors Diamond and Milan G. Chheda, MD, an assistant professor of medicine and of neurology at Washington University School of Medicine, and Jeremy N. Rich, MD, of UC San Diego, Zhu tested whether the virus could kill stem cells in glioblastomas removed from patients at diagnosis. They infected tumors with one of two strains of Zika virus. Both strains spread through the tumors, infecting and killing the cancer stem cells while largely avoiding other tumor cells.

The findings suggest that Zika infection and chemotherapy-radiation treatment have complementary effects. The standard treatment kills the bulk of the tumor cells but often leaves the stem cells intact to regenerate the tumor. Zika virus attacks the stem cells but bypasses the greater part of the tumor.

“We see Zika one day being used in combination with current therapies to eradicate the whole tumor,” said Chheda, Siteman Cancer Center neurologist and research member. 

To find out whether the virus could help treat cancer in a living animal, the researchers injected either Zika virus or saltwater (a placebo) directly into the brain tumors of 18 and 15 mice, respectively. Tumors were significantly smaller in the Zika-treated mice two weeks after injection, and those mice survived significantly longer than the ones given saltwater.

If Zika were used in people, it would have to be injected into the brain, most likely during surgery to remove the primary tumor. If introduced through another part of the body, the person’s immune system would sweep it away before it could reach the brain.

The idea of injecting a virus notorious for causing brain damage into people’s brains seems alarming, but Zika may be safer for use in adults because its primary targets – neuroprogenitor cells – are rare in the adult brain. The fetal brain, on the other hand, is loaded with such cells, which is part of the reason why Zika infection before birth produces widespread and severe brain damage, while natural infection in adulthood causes mild symptoms.

The researchers conducted additional studies of the virus using brain tissue from epilepsy patients and showed that the virus does not infect noncancerous brain cells.

As an additional safety feature, the researchers introduced two mutations that weakened the virus’s ability to combat the cell’s defenses against infection, reasoning that the mutated virus still would be able to grow in tumor cells – which have a poor antiviral defense system – but would be eliminated quickly in healthy cells with a robust antiviral response.

When they tested the mutant viral strain and the original parental strain in glioblastoma stem cells, they found that the original strain was more potent, but that the mutant strain also succeeded in killing the cancerous cells.

“We’re going to introduce additional mutations to sensitize the virus even more to the innate immune response and prevent the infection from spreading,” said Diamond, who also is a professor of molecular microbiology, and of pathology and immunology. “Once we add a few more changes, I think it’s going to be impossible for the virus to overcome them and cause disease.”

Schreiber awarded Balzan Prize for pioneering cancer research

Robert D. Schreiber, PhD, the Andrew M. and Jane M. Bursky Distinguished Professor at Washington University School of Medicine, has been named a co-recipient of the Balzan Prize for his groundbreaking work in immunology and melanoma research.

The award is meant to “foster culture, the sciences and the most meritorious initiatives in the cause of humanity, peace and fraternity among peoples throughout the world,” according to the International Balzan Prize Foundation. 

Schreiber will receive the award with co-recipient James Allison, PhD, of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center on Nov. 17 in Bern, Switzerland. It comes with a $790,000 prize, half of which must go toward research. 

“Professors Schreiber and Allison have played transformative roles in the field of tumor immunology,” said Jules Hoffmann,emeritus distinguished class research director at the French National Center for Scientific Research, in announcing the prize winners Monday. “Both have collaborated recently in the identification of tumor-specific neoantigens, together with other scientists, an approach that might lead to the development of effective personalized cancer-specific vaccines.” 

By targeting tumor-specific neoantigens, which are formed during cancer development and are unique to each patient’s tumor, Schreiber and other scientists aim to eradicate cancer cells while sparing healthy ones. 

Schreiber, who also is director of the Andrew M. and Jane M. Bursky Center for Human Immunology and Immunotherapy Programs at the School of Medicine and co-leader of the tumor immunology program at Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine, helped to pioneer our understanding of the immune system’s potential role in battling cancer. He and collaborators at the School of Medicine have laid the foundation for the development of personalized vaccines for patients with cancers of the breast, brain, lung, pancreas, prostate, melanoma and certain forms of lymphoma. 

Balzan Prizes are awarded in four subject areas – two in the sciences and two in the humanities – that change every year.

The Balzan Foundation acts jointly through two foundations, one headquartered in Milan and the other in Zurich. The foundation’s General Prize Committee is  composed of respected European scholars and scientists . Eugenio Balzan, for whom the foundation is named, was a leading figure in business and culture in Milan at the beginning of the 20th century.

Michalski earns Faculty Achievement Award

Jeff Michalski, MD, the Carlos Perez Distinguished Professor of Radiation Oncology, has received the Washington University Medical Center Alumni Association Faculty Achievement Award for his contributions to radiation oncology and to the improvement of patient care at Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine.

Michalski, vice chair and director of clinical programs for the Department of Radiation Oncology and a Siteman Cancer Center member, is an international leader in the treatment of prostate and pediatric cancers. Colleagues in his field credit him with contributing greatly to the advancement of radiation oncology as a clinical discipline and to the development of innovative approaches to treatment planning and delivery of radiation therapy, including 3-D treatment planning and intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT), as well as treatment quality assurance. He has been a member of many national and international task forces and committees that have formulated important recommendations to set standards for the practice of radiation therapy.

Michalski leads Siteman’s clinical trials program and oversees clinical operations for radiation oncology at six facilities, including all five Siteman locations. He also is considered an outstanding mentor, teaching residents in urologic and pediatric oncology. He has held many national leadership positions. Currently, he is co-chair of the National Cancer Institute Genitourinary Cancers Steering Committee, as well as secretary-treasurer and board member of the American Society of Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). He chairs the Radiation Oncology Committee of NRG Oncology, a multi-institutional cancer research group. Michalski has been honored with the School of Medicine’s Distinguished Clinician Award, as well as the Frank Ellis Medal from the Royal College of Radiologists and the British Institute of Radiology. He is a fellow of ASTRO and the American College of Radiology.

Michalski received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1982 and his medical degree from the Medical College of Wisconsin in 1986. After residency training at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center and Washington University’s Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology, he joined the School of Medicine faculty in 1991. He received an MBA from the John Olin School of Business at Washington University in 2001. In 2004, he completed Harvard School of Public Health’s Leadership Development Program.

Dunn awarded cancer fellowship

Gavin Dunn, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of neurosurgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has received the Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator Award. The three-year award will support his investigations into how the body’s immune system can be harnessed to fight brain cancer.

Dunn, who also is a member of the Andrew M. and Jane M. Bursky Center for Human Immunology and Immunotherapy Programs, focuses on glioblastoma, the most deadly form of brain cancer. He studies how the immune system recognizes brain cancer cells and how it can be harnessed to treat patients with glioblastoma.

Dunn earned his medical and doctoral degrees from Washington University in 2006 and joined the faculty in 2014.

The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation funds scientists it believes have the highest potential to revolutionize how to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer.

Longnecker named Siteman Cancer Center vice president of oncology services

Christina Longnecker, a medical administrator with degrees in law, business administration and nursing, has been named vice president of oncology services for Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine. She had been serving in that role on an interim basis for the past nine months.

Longnecker is responsible for strategic planning, budgeting, and operational and clinical quality related to the delivery of cancer care services at Siteman’s main location, which is on the Washington University Medical Campus, and at three satellite locations in the St. Louis region. She also will oversee the Siteman Cancer Network, an affiliation with regional medical centers that is aimed at improving the health of individuals and communities through cancer research, treatment and prevention. Longnecker was selected after a national search.

“Christi brings to her role not only prerequisite skills in health and business administration, she also brings the experiences and heart of a nurse,” said Robert Cannon, president of Barnes-Jewish Hospital. “She started her career caring directly for people, a focus that will continue to serve the patients of Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine.”

In her role, Longnecker works with the leadership teams at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and across clinical departments to establish processes and infrastructure to achieve the highest standards of patient care. She reports to Cannon and Timothy J. Eberlein, MD, Siteman’s director and the Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Distinguished Professor at the School of Medicine.

“For nearly 20 years, Siteman Cancer Center has provided exceptional care for patients of this region and beyond,” Eberlein said. “Christi, with her broad experience and deep dedication to providing the highest level of care, is the right person for this pivotal leadership role.”

Longnecker succeeds Trish Lollo, who was named president of Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital last year.

At the outset of Longnecker’s career, from 1995 to 2005, she served as a staff and supervisory nurse at hospitals in Quincy, Ill., and the St. Louis area. She then moved into clinical operations and was responsible for workflow, staffing and budgets at a company that advises and assists intensive care units around the country. In 2007, Longnecker joined Barnes-Jewish Hospital as manager of the liver, kidney and pancreas transplant program, later becoming an inpatient clinical nurse manager and patient-care services director for oncology. She served in the latter role from 2012 to August 2016, when she was named interim vice president of oncology services.

“Siteman Cancer Center and Barnes-Jewish Hospital, with the help of our Washington University partners, have experienced great growth in our capacity to deliver world-class cancer care to patients across the region,” Longnecker said. “I’ve been given a very strong foundation on which to serve, and we will continue to be guided by our dedication to patients and the trust they place in us.”

New imaging technique aims to ensure surgeons completely remove cancer

Of the quarter-million women diagnosed with breast cancer every year in the United States, about 180,000 undergo surgery to remove the cancerous tissue while preserving as much healthy breast tissue as possible.

However, there’s no accurate method to tell during surgery whether all of the cancerous tissue has been successfully removed. The gold-standard analysis takes a day or more, much too long for a surgeon to wait before wrapping up an operation. As a result, about a quarter of women who undergo lumpectomies receive word later that they will need a second surgery because a portion of the tumor was left behind.

Now, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and California Institute of Technology report that they have developed a technology to scan a tumor sample and produce images detailed and accurate enough to be used to check whether a tumor has been completely removed.

Called photoacoustic imaging, the new technology takes less time than standard analysis techniques. But more work is needed before it is fast enough to be used during an operation.

The research is published May 17 in Science Advances.

“This is a proof of concept that we can use photoacoustic imaging on breast tissue and get images that look similar to traditional staining methods without any sort of tissue processing,” said Deborah Novack, MD, PhD, an associate professor of medicine, and of pathology and immunology, and a co-senior author on the study.

The researchers are working on improvements that they expect will bring the time needed to scan a specimen down to 10 minutes, fast enough to be used during an operation. The current gold-standard method of analysis, which is based on preserving the tissue and then staining it to make the cells easier to see, hasn’t gotten any faster since it was first developed in the mid-20th century.

For solid tumors in most parts of the body, doctors use a technique known as a frozen section to do a quick check of the excised lump during the surgery. They look for a thin rim of normal cells around the tumor. Malignant cells at the margins suggest the surgeon missed some of the tumor, increasing the chances that the disease will recur.

But frozen sections don’t work well on fatty specimens like those from the breast, so the surgeon must finish a breast lumpectomy without knowing for sure how successful it was.

“Right now, we don’t have a good method to assess margins during breast cancer surgeries,” said Rebecca Aft, MD, PhD, a professor of surgery and a co-senior author on the study.  Aft, a breast cancer surgeon, treats patients at Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine.

Currently, after surgery a specimen is sent to a pathologist, who slices it, stains it and inspects the margins for malignant cells under a microscope. Results are sent back to the surgeon within a few days.

To speed up the process, the researchers took advantage of a phenomenon known as the photoacoustic effect. When a beam of light of the right wavelength hits a molecule, some of the energy is absorbed and then released as sound in the ultrasound range. These sound waves can be detected and used to create an image.

“All molecules absorb light at some wavelength,” said co-senior author Lihong Wang, PhD, who conducted the work when he was a professor of biomedical engineering at Washington University’s School of Engineering & Applied Science. He is now at Caltech. “This is what makes photoacoustic imaging so powerful. Essentially, you can see any molecule, provided you have the ability to produce light of any wavelength. None of the other imaging technologies can do that. Ultrasound will not do that. X-rays will not do that. Light is the only tool that allows us to provide biochemical information.”

The researchers tested their technique by scanning slices of tumors removed from three breast cancer patients. For comparison, they also stained each specimen according to standard procedures.

The photoacoustic image matched the stained samples in all key features. The architecture of the tissue and subcellular detail such as the size of nuclei were clearly visible.

“It’s the pattern of cells – their growth pattern, their size, their relationship to one another – that tells us if this is normal tissue or something malignant,” Novack said. “Overall, the photoacoustic images had a lot of the same features that we see with standard staining, which means we can use the same criteria to interpret the photoacoustic imaging. We don’t have to come up with new criteria.”

Having established that photoacoustic techniques can produce usable images, the researchers are working on reducing the scanning time.

“We expect to be able to speed up the process,” Wang said. “For this study, we had only a single channel for emitting light. If you have multiple channels, you can scan in parallel and that reduces the imaging time. Another way to speed it up is to fire the laser faster. Each laser pulse gives you one data point. Faster pulsing means faster data collection.”

Aft, Novack and Wang are applying for a grant to build a photoacoustic imaging machine with multiple channels and fast lasers.

“One day we think we’ll be able to take a specimen straight from the patient, plop it into the machine in the operating room and know in minutes whether we’ve gotten all the tumor out or not,” Aft said. “That’s the goal.”

Wong TTW, Zhang R, Hai P, Zhang C, Pleitez MA, Aft RL, Novack DV, Wang LV. Fast label-free multilayered histology-like imaging of human breast cancer by photoacoustic microscopy. Science Advances. May 17, 2017

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, grant number DP1 EB016986 and R01 CA186567, and by Washington University’s Siteman Cancer Center’s 2014 Research Development Award.

Mutch named Gershman Chair in colon and rectal surgery

Matthew Mutch, MD, chief of the Section of Colon and Rectal Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has been named the Solon and Bettie Gershman Chair in Colon and Rectal Surgery at Barnes-Jewish Hospital (BJH).

A national leader in the laparoscopic treatment of colorectal cancer and the training of surgeons in this procedure, Mutch has served as colon and rectal surgery chief since 2015.

The endowed chair was established by the Solon and Bettie Gershman family through The Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital, to support vital clinical services for patients and groundbreaking research to better understand and treat colon and rectal conditions.

“We are so fortunate to have such a terrific leader in this field as our chief of colorectal surgery,” said Timothy J. Eberlein, MD, the Bixby Professor of Surgery, head of the Department of Surgery at the School of Medicine and director of Siteman Cancer Center. “Matt has been a leader in developing innovative treatments for rectal cancer, minimally invasive techniques for colon surgery and new pathways for treating patients more efficiently and more safely. We are so appreciative of the entire Gershman family for their generosity and support of this fabulous professorship.”

Bob Cannon, BJH president and BJC group president, said the honor recognizes Mutch’s leadership in research that develops better standards of care and better outcomes for patients. “Dr. Mutch’s many impressive accomplishments have led him to this auspicious installation as the second Solon and Bettie Gershman Endowed Chair for Colon and Rectal Surgery,” Cannon said.

The chair previously was held by Ira Kodner, MD, professor emeritus of surgery. Kodner served as the first colon and rectal surgery chief and retired in 2013.

Mutch, a colorectal surgeon at Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine, also serves on Siteman’s Quality Assessment and Safety Monitoring Committee and is co-chair of Siteman’s Lower GI Cancer. He is also a member of the Surgical Innovations Committee in the university’s Department of Surgery.

He is involved in resident and fellow education on the national level as vice chair of the Colon and Rectal Surgery Residency Review Committee, and is a member of the Fellowship Council Accreditation Committee. He also serves as secretary of the Association of Program Directors for Colon and Rectal Surgery; on the executive council of the American Society of Colon and Rectal Surgeons; and is a council representative of the Self-Assessment Committee. He also is a member of the Written Board Subcommittee, Maintenance of Certification Committee, and an oral boards associate examiner for the American Board of Colon and Rectal Surgery.

Mutch’s research focuses on the identification of molecular markers to predict cancer-related outcomes in patients with rectal cancer, and clinical outcomes related to laparoscopic colorectal surgery. He has published 59 peer-reviewed articles.

Mutch has been a member of the faculty since 2002. Before he was named a section chief, he was the program director for the Colon and Rectal Surgery Fellowship from 2007 to 2016. A graduate of the School of Medicine, he completed his general surgery residency at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, followed by a fellowship in colon and rectal surgery at the Lahey Clinic in Burlington, Mass.

Solon and Bettie Gershman established the chair in 1998. Solon Gershman – founder and chairman of both Solon Gershman Realty and Gershman Investment Corp. – was a generous and dedicated philanthropist who gave to dozens of charities and organizations in the St. Louis area.

Shifter named Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Woman of the Year

Ariel Shifter, a Washington University clinical research coordinator at Siteman Cancer Center, has been named Woman of the Year by the Gateway Chapter of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. She was recognized May 5 at the society’s Man & Woman of the Year gala at The Chase Park Plaza. 

As part of a related fundraising campaign, Shifter collected $73,000 in donations in 10 weeks for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society and related research.

“It’s an honor to be named Woman of the Year,” said Shifter, who works in the medical oncology treatment area at Siteman’s main location. “More importantly, it’s very gratifying to know I have so many family and friends who, like me, care about finding and funding a cure.”

Shifter, who has worked at Siteman since August 2015, also is a Hodgkin lymphoma survivor. After fighting her own battle as a patient at Siteman from 

June to September 2014, she changed her career path to become a Siteman staff member.

“I would not be here today if passionate individuals had not dedicated their time and money to finding a treatment that would allow me to live a full and healthy life after cancer,” Shifter wrote on her Leukemia & Lymphoma Society fundraising page. “I am so thankful to them, and I hope that my fundraising efforts will help current and future cancer patients feel the same sense of pride and relief that I felt when I found out my cancer was gone.”