Fred Hutch working to cure infection-related cancers

Early in his career, Dr. Corey Casper developed a stirring vision. He knew that infectious diseases cause about 25 percent of all cancers around the world. And he believed most of these cancers could be prevented using technology and tools that are available today. But he needed to find the best place to study these cancers and new strategies to prevent and treat them.  

So, in 2004, Casper traveled to Uganda. His first stop was the Ugandan capital, Kampala, where he visited the Uganda Cancer Institute (UCI) – the sole cancer treatment facility in a country of 32 million people.  

Each year, infection-related cancers cause about 1.5 million deaths and account for approximately 3 million new cancer diagnoses. Roughly two-thirds of these cases are in developing countries where patients can’t afford expensive treatments. Those facts aren’t widely known, and are something that World Cancer Day, held each year on Feb. 4, is helping illuminate with a campaign to raise awareness.

In 2008, Casper and his Ugandan colleagues launched the UCI/Hutchinson Center Cancer Alliance to improve care and develop affordable treatments and prevention approaches that could save millions of lives worldwide. Conducting research in a place where malignancies like Kaposi Sarcoma and Burkitt lymphoma are common means Casper’s team can easily find patients to participate in clinical trials and can quickly complete those trials.

“People in Uganda see these cancers every day and they’re extremely invested in finding cures,” Casper said.

To highlight this research’s potential, Casper points to the success of the vaccine that prevents HPV, which causes cervical cancer. The HPV vaccine proves that an inexpensive medication can save hundreds of thousands of people from cancer, and it was developed with key contributions by Fred Hutch’s Dr. Denise Galloway.

“A lot of cancer research focuses on incremental steps toward solutions that might not materialize for decades, but we know how to make vaccines to wipe out infection-related cancers,” Casper said. “We can do it within our lifetimes.”

In 2008, Uganda was home to only one oncologist, making it impossible for most cancer patients to get the care they need. Fred Hutch and the UCI launched a program in 2007 that brings Ugandan doctors to Seattle to complete an oncology fellowship, and trains other medical specialists at the UCI.

The program has so far trained 16 cancer specialists and more than 200 support staff including nurses, pharmacists, research and lab technicians, and clinical and administrative staff. This helped increase the UCI’s treatment capacity to 35,000 patients, up from 10,000 patients when the program started.

The UCI/Hutchinson Cancer Center Alliance also developed a treatment protocol for Burkitt lymphoma, the most common life-threatening malignancy among Ugandan children. Burkitt lymphoma is curable in the US but only about 10 percent of patients in the developing world survive the disease. The new protocol means that all children with Burkitt lymphoma at the UCI will be treated according to standardized care guidelines that could be implemented by clinics around the world.

“It’s a step toward our goal of increasing survival rates for Burkitt lymphoma and other common infection-related cancers,” said Erica Sessle, managing director of Fred Hutch’s Uganda program.