Georgetown University Medical Center has announced the creation of a center that may help advance a cure for some of the deadliest forms of cancer -- colon, pancreatic and other gastrointestinal cancers -- thanks to a $6.75 million gift.
The Otto J. Ruesch Center for the Cure of Gastrointestinal Cancers will fund gastrointestinal cancer research, drug discovery and patient advocacy efforts at the university's
Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Jeanne Ruesch gave the gift in memory of her husband,
Otto, a prominent Washington-area businessman and philanthropist who died of pancreatic cancer in October 2004 at the age of 64, after being treated at Lombardi.
During the Swiss-born immigrant's yearlong battle with the disease, the Ruesch family was struck by the lack of public understanding of gastrointestinal cancers, as well as the difficulty of accessing information and treatment.
"Our family was astounded that the prognosis for pancreatic cancer -- one of the most devastating (gastrointestinal) cancers -- was so grim," Ruesch says. "There has been so little progress in identifying new treatment methodologies in recent years. Through the course of Otto's illness, we saw so many families whose suffering touched our hearts and made us feel that we had to take some responsibility for trying to make a difference in treating this terrible disease."
Gastrointestinal cancers remain among the most fatal cancers. Advances in treatment have lagged well behind other disease priorities such as breast cancer because of a smaller pool of research funding and fewer survivors to carry the torch of advocacy, according to
Dr. John Marshall, Ruesch Center director and chief of the hematology and oncology division for Georgetown University Hospital.
"We have lost our way in gastrointestinal cancer research in this country. We have accepted that merely adding time to one's life is adequate as a treatment goal and have gotten away from the charge of curing these cancers," says Marshall, who also serves as associate director for clinical research at Lombardi.
Gastrointestinal cancers include esophageal, colorectal, gastric, pancreatic and liver cancers. Many of the patients Marshall sees with those forms of cancer will die within a few years, mainly because the therapies currently available are not targeted enough to be effective. The Ruesch Center plans to leverage Georgetown's existing cancer expertise and resources, linking them to other regional, national and global research institutions engaged in similar work.
"As a medical oncologist who specializes in the management of patients with gastrointestinal cancers, I am all too aware of the challenges we face to prevent, cure and effectively treat these malignancies," says
Dr. Louis Weiner, director of Lombardi. "The mission of the Ruesch Center dovetails beautifully with the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center's ongoing efforts to meet these challenges, and this support will enable us to more completely understand the entirety of the problem."
The center's mission also underscores the Medical Center's overarching vision of a systems medicine approach to treating and preventing cancer, emphasizing the highly personalized nature of disease and the need for individualized therapies that fit each patient's genetic and environmental profile.
"We are not going to solve everything within gastrointestinal cancer treatment within the walls of Georgetown. But we will provide a model for how to move forward," Marshall says. "If we're right -- and I believe we are -- we will have a major impact on drug discovery and development and on bringing about a cure for these deadly cancers."
