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Dr. Neal Meropol Joins Fox Chase Cancer Center to Head Gastrointestinal Cancer Programs
"I've always been interested in the personal issues faced by
patients confronting their mortality," he said in a recent interview.
"I've done a lot of early-phase clinical trials, and this is where we
need to better understand what the patients are going through."
In conjunction with collaborators at Georgetown University, he
developed a model for understanding how patients choose high-risk
therapies.
"We started to test the model by interviewing patients, their
nurses and their doctors about their expectations regarding the
potential benefits and side-effects of experimental therapy," explained
Meropol. The study also includes a look at how quality of life affects
a patient's decisions.
"What we're trying to understand is the patient's
decision-making calculus, so we can learn better ways to approach
patients and provide them with information about possible treatment
options," he added. "Our aim is not to figure out ways to get people
into clinical trials. Rather, I want to figure out the best way to
approach different types of patients with different sets of
vulnerabilities so that they are best served in making decisions."
Meropol has also done a lot of work in preventing side effects
of chemotherapy and developing more tolerable treatments.
"I'm interested in new drugs to prevent chemotherapy side
effects as well as in immunologic therapies, which would specifically
target the cancerous tissue rather than the normal tissue," he said.
He is looking into using new types of therapies such as
monoclonal antibodies and vaccines to help his efforts. In addition, he
has developed several oral agents with effectiveness against
gastrointestinal cancers.
For patients with pancreatic cancer, Meropol brings with him a
clinical study of a vaccine developed at Roswell Park in conjunction
with Dr. Jeff Schlom, chief of the National Cancer Institute's
laboratory of tumor immunology and biology. The vaccine attempts to
stimulate the immune system to recognize cancer cells with a protein
that permits uncontrolled cell growth.
This abnormal protein results from a mutation in the ras gene.
Normally the gene and its protein help regulate cell growth, but the
mutant version is commonly associated with pancreatic and other cancers.
Another clinical study by Meropol uses a monoclonal antibody and
two other biologic response modifiers, interleukin-2 and GM-CSF. This
treatment holds promise for patients with colorectal and other
adenocarcinomas.
He plans to launch additional new treatment studies at Fox
Chase. "We'll be developing innovative programs that involve biologic
therapies or chemotherapy combined with surgery and radiation," Meropol
said.
Meropol earned his bachelor's degree in philosophy with honors
at Princeton University followed by his M.D. at Vanderbilt University in
Nashville, Tennessee, in 1985. He received the Outstanding Performance
as an intern in the department of medicine at Case Western Reserve
University in Cleveland, Ohio, where he also completed his residency.
After holding clinical and research fellowships in hematology
and oncology at the University of Pennsylvania in 1992, Meropol joined
the faculty of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and was appointed assistant
professor in the department of medicine at State University of New York
at Buffalo.
Meropol's hobbies include playing guitar. He and his wife,
Sharon, have a son, Daniel, age 7, and daughter, Hannah, age 4.
Fox Chase Cancer Center is one of 34 National Cancer
Institute-designated comprehensive cancer centers in the nation. The
Center's activities include basic and clinical research, prevention,
detection and treatment of cancer and community outreach programs.