|
|
JULY 2023
|
|
|
IN THIS NEWSLETTER:
- From the Cancer Consortium
- CCSG Updates
- In the Spotlight
- Consortium Kudos
- Current Funding Opportunities
- Save the Date - Upcoming Events
- From the Office of Community Outreach & Engagement
- From the Consortium Shared Resources
- From Clinical Research Support
- From the Library
- Consortium Leader Close Up: Beth Levine
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
FROM THE CANCER CONSORTIUM
|
CCSG Updates
Holy External Advisory Board preparations, Batman! Your favorite Consortium Administration heroes are in wrapping up the process of collecting, compiling, and formatting our EAB's feedback on CCSG narrative drafts. This feedback will then be discussed in-depth at next week's EAB Meeting on Thursday, July 13. Additional revisions for the CCSG will be determined based on the takeaways from that meeting. Wish us luck!
|
In the Spotlight
The following interinstitutional Cancer Consortium collaborations were included in the most recent edition of the Science Spotlight:
Please join us in congratulating these investigators!
|
Consortium Kudos
Congratulations to Dr. Amanda Paulovich (Breast & Ovary Cancers), who recently received a new five-year, $5 million grant form the NCI's Early Detection Research Network (EDRN). "She will lead a Biomarker Characterization Center with co-PI’s Dr. Andrew Hoofnagle of the University of Washington and Dr. Pei Wang of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai to develop a blood-based test to complement mammography in the early detection of breast cancers. Fred Hutch’s Dr. Janie Lee, Dr. Garnet Anderson and Dr. Christopher Li are also co-investigators in this new grant.
"This new award includes set-aside funds for collaborations with either other EDRN centers or external collaborators. The Paulovich Laboratory is always interested in collaborations." (Credit: Travis Lorentzen, Hutch High Five)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
CURRENT FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
|
ITHS Pilot Program Awards Now Open
ITHS is thrilled to announce that they are now accepting applications for the 2024-2025 ITHS Pilot Program awards. This program offers a wonderful opportunity for investigators from the five-state WWAMI region (Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, Idaho) to receive funding to help their new research projects get off the ground.
Current available awards include:
- Early Stage Product Development Awards
- New Interdisciplinary Academic Partnership Awards
- Academic-Community Partnership Awards
Key Dates:
- Letter of Intent deadline: July 10, 2023
- Notification to invitation to apply: July 31, 2023
- Application due: September 1, 2023
- Awardees notified: early December 2023
- Award period: March 1, 2024–February 28, 2025
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
UPCOMING EVENTS
|
» July 26, 2023: NIH Diversity Supplement Lunch and Learn
The Cancer Consortium’s Research Development Office is partnering with the Seattle Children’s Diversity Supplement Connections Program to host a virtual Lunch and Learn where interested students will have an opportunity to learn about the NIH diversity supplement programs, resources that are available, and how to apply for NIH Diversity Supplement funding. During this session, participants will have an opportunity to connect and network with Diversity Supplement recipients about their experience and how it has facilitated their training.
Please share this information with undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs from your labs who may be thinking about applying!
|
» September 10-13, 2023: REDCap Conference 2023
The annual REDCap conference is a three-and-a-half-day event that offers educational and networking opportunities to REDCap administrators around the world. This year, ITHS is helping to host the event in Seattle.
The conference will be held at the Westin in Seattle (1900 5th Avenue, Seattle WA 98101) and is open to all REDCap Administrators. To learn more about the event or register to attend, click here.
|
» October 9-10, 2023: Immunotherapy IRC and Cancer Consortium Cancer Immunology Program Retreat
Save the date for the upcoming IIRC and Cancer Immunology Research Program Retreat! The retreat will be held at Suncadia Resort and is open to members of the Cancer Immunology program.
Additional information to come.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
FROM THE OFFICE OF COMMUNITY OUTREACH & ENGAGEMENT
|
|
Congratulations to the 2023 Community Grants Program Awardees!
|
|
|
|
This year, the Office of Community Outreach & Engagement partnered with the Community Benefit program and the Partnership for the Advancement of Cancer Research (U54 partnership between Fred Hutch Cancer Center Center & New Mexico State University) to fund 9 grant projects (a total of $15,000) across Washington State and northern Idaho.
|
|
|
|
These grants support community-based organizations to plan, develop, implement, and evaluate culturally and linguistically appropriate and evidence-informed programs that are tailored to meet specific needs in their communities.
Click here to learn more about this year’s grantees.
|
In Case You Missed It: Recap of the WA Comprehensive Cancer Control Plan Re-Launch Meeting
A big thank you to everyone who joined the Washington Comprehensive Cancer Control Plan Re-launch meeting on June 13th in person at the Sea-Tac Conference Center and over Zoom! We are excited to collaborate with the Washington State Department of Health on this important endeavor. The day was full of conversation, brainstorming, and planning.
|
|
|
|
New Episode of the OCOE's Podcast Is Available!
Are you all caught up on the OCOE’s Cancer Health Equity NOW podcast episodes? If not, check out Season 3, Episode 6 which was released in honor of National Nurses Week. Join Community Health Educators Snowy Johnson and Aden Afework while they talk with Arlyce Coumar MN, RN, OCN and Jennifer Lynch, RN, BSN, BMTCN about the role of oncology nurses. Arlyce and Jennifer share their unique perspectives and experiences as nurses, educators, patient advocates, and policy advocates. Click here to listen.
|
|
|
|
The OCOE Is Hiring!
The Office of Community Outreach & Engagement is currently hiring for two Community Health Educator Positions:
Please help us by sharing these opportunities with your network!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
FROM THE CONSORTIUM SHARED RESOURCES
|
The Biostatistics Shared Resource Is Available to Support Consortium Members!
This message is intended to remind (or inform, as the case may be) Cancer Consortium faculty and staff of the existence of the Biostatistics Shared Resource (BSR), one of 12 Shared Resources housed within the Cancer Center Support Grant. In the last year, the BSR sent out a survey to everyone in the Consortium with the goal of learning what improvements could be made in the BSR. One finding from that survey was that some were either unaware that such a resource exists or uncertain how to contact the BSR, and hence the reason for sending this message.
Largely speaking, the BSR is intended to provide biostatistical support to faculty and staff who need support but lack funding for such. The BSR is available to all Consortium members, and we provide no-charge short-term collaborations with Consortium scientists. Longer term collaborations require support from grants and contracts. More detail on the BSR can be found on our website, which contains a variety of information. Please see Biostatistics Shared Resources for more information.
|
|
|
|
|
Saying Goodbye to Jeff Delrow, PhD, Senior Director of Molecular & Cellular Scientific Resources
|
|
|
|
Jeff Delrow, respected collaborator, innovator, leader, and friend has resigned from Fred Hutch after 25 years. Jeff was recruited by Dr. Lee Hartwell, Director Emeritus and Nobel laureate, in the summer of 1998, to bring DNA Microarray technology to Fred Hutch. At the time, few microarray labs existed in the world, and only a handful dared to manufacture their own. Through tireless experimentation and collaboration, Jeff led the team to develop several groundbreaking microarrays that were shipped to eager chicken, yeast, and fruit fly investigators across the globe.
|
|
|
|
These microarrays were the cutting-edge technology of the time, allowing investigators to study the expression of thousands to tens of thousands of genes on a single slide. While these microarrays and samples were flying across the world, we’d often hear back from our investigators a few months later with “I’m so excited about the experiment I was able to perform but I have no idea how to analyze all this data!!” At the time, there were no such persons as bioinformaticians, and this skill set was largely self-taught. So, what did Jeff do? He taught himself and another team member how to perform this complex analysis, providing the end-to-end solution that investigators experience today from experimental design to data generation to data interpretation. To this day, the integration and collaboration of the Fred Hutch Genomics & Bioinformatics teams is a standout amongst peer resources at other institutions. The team continues to take tremendous pride in pushing the boundaries and raising the bar of excellence. I could elaborate much more on the evolution of the lab and team over the last couple of decades, the numerous novel assays developed with the support of Jeff’s expertise, the 85+ co-authored publications, along with the important work he has done as a senior leader of Shared Resources. However, I’d like to switch gears instead because so many of you reading this know Jeff simply as a good friend. Jeff has always been the person to stop in the hallway and ask about your family, friends, music, food, or anything outdoors. In fact, he has been the guide for many of you up Mt. Rainier! Jeff always makes time for people and shows that he cares. It is no surprise that so many of Jeff’s longstanding relationships at Fred Hutch have nothing to do with science.
Jeff’s last day was Friday, June 23rd. His departure is truly a loss for Shared Resources and for all of us at Fred Hutch. We will miss him terribly!
|
|
Introducing the New Associate Director of Comparative Medicine!
|
|
|
|
We are excited to announce that Marian Esvelt, DVM, DACLAM, joined us as our new Associate Director of Comparative Medicine on June 27, 2023. Dr. Esvelt is a board-certified laboratory animal veterinarian with special expertise in rodent pre-clinical models. She received her DVM from Washington State University College of Veterinary Medicine, and then completed her laboratory animal medicine residency and postdoctoral studies at the University of Michigan. She spent the last 5 years overseeing a large and diverse animal research program at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. A native of the Pacific Northwest, Dr. Esvelt looks forward to returning to Seattle and joining Fred Hutch!
|
|
|
|
Cell Processing Facility Hosts a Tour for Local Students
The Therapeutic Products Program (TPP) Cell Processing Facility (CPF) hosted a group of high school students from the Shoreline Community College Biotechnology program on May 11th. The group of nine students and their instructor, Racheal Rawle, came for a presentation and a full tour of the CPF facility and the support lab areas.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
FROM CLINICAL RESEARCH SUPPORT
|
FY2023 Clinical Trial Data Priorities
As the Cancer Consortium prepares to submit the competing renewal of our Cancer Center Support Grant (CCSG), it is critical to ensure your study and accrual data are accurate and current in the OnCore CTMS. The protocol and accrual data from OnCore are used to demonstrate the scientific impact of individual programs and across the Consortium since the last competing renewal.
Beginning in July, Clinical Research Support (CRS) and CTMS teams will be reaching out to validate your FY2023 OnCore data and resolve any outstanding QC queries. Please ensure your protocols are entered into OnCore with the current recruitment statuses and participant information, including demographics that demonstrate the breadth of Consortium research.
I appreciate you treating this as a high priority and instructing your teams to provide timely responses and query resolutions. Thank you for your attention to this critical activity and for your continued support of our NCI comprehensive cancer center.
Thank you,
Thomas J. Lynch, Jr., MD
|
The Research Group Review Summary for SRC Form Has Migrated to REDCap
As of June 26th, the Research Group Review Summary for SRC Form is now completed in REDCap. This form is required as part of the Consortium’s Protocol Review and Monitoring System (PRMS) and completed prior to new protocol review by the Scientific Review Committee (SRC). REDCap supports many improvements, including automated notifications to collaborating groups, and provides a PDF copy for submission to the SRC.
For more information, please visit CancerConsortium.org. Questions can be sent to PRMS@fredhutch.org.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
FROM THE LIBRARY
|
Updated Link to the Library's Publications Dashboard in Tableau
As of July 5, the Library's Tableau Publications Dashboard has been rebuilt and republished with a new link. The link on the Library's CenterNet pages have been updated, but any personal bookmarks will need to be updated, as the old link will no longer work.
Please pass along the new link to any colleagues with whom you might have shared the dashboard!
Additionally, please note that the quarterly counts displayed in the dashboard are low for CY Q2/FY Q4 (i.e. Apr-Jun 2023) and shouldn’t be considered final counts. In addition to the natural lag between papers getting indexed in PubMed and flowing into our system and available to verify, we are also a little behind in our ongoing pubs verification process, as we’ve focused our resources over the last little while on finalizing the dashboard, but we’re working to get caught up.
If you have any questions or concerns about the dashboard or the underlying data, please reach out to us at library@fredhutch.org.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
CONSORTIUM LEADER CLOSE UP: BETH LEVINE
|
|
|
|
For this month's newsletter, we got together with Beth Levine to talk about the library services, what it means to be a team leader, and whippets. As Library Services Manager for Fred Hutch, Beth and her team are responsible for tracking Consortium publications, and the data they provide is an integral part of the CCSG. Keep reading for Beth's interview - and dog pictures!
|
|
|
|
How did you find yourself working in the library space? What was your career trajectory like?
When I was in college, I worked in the library there – that was my first student job – and then a couple of years in I got promoted to a night and weekend supervisor for the department I worked in, which was a fantastic job for a student because it was part time but higher paid than most of the student jobs because it had supervisory responsibilities, but also left my days free for classes. So I sort of fell into libraries as easy jobs to get as a student, and that was the start of it all. My degree is in history with a minor in English, and almost a minor in psychology. My career trajectory at the time was that I wanted to be a teacher. I moved to Seattle right after I graduated, and was doing a lot of work subbing in childcare centers in Seattle (including, coincidentally, Hutch Kids!). Then I saw a job opening at Virginia Mason in the library there, so I applied for that just based on my library experience in college, and got that job. I really loved working in a teaching hospital library – that was a super fun, dynamic place to work, with all the residents coming into the library. But hospital libraries can be a bit tenuous in terms of layoffs, and there started to be a lot of talk about layoffs and I got really nervous. I can’t remember if it was a conference that I attended locally, or a training – like a PubMed training, possibly – but I met one of the library techs at Fred Hutch when I attended that, and she mentioned “Oh, we have an opening for a library tech position, you should apply for that.” And I did, and I got it. So, that’s how I came to Fred Hutch, 30 years ago this year.
I didn’t really intend to work in libraries – it was just what my experience was, and I needed a job. But at that point I’d had enough library experience that I decided it would be a fine career, so I applied to the UW iSchool to get a master’s degree in library science. But I was working full-time and supporting myself, and for various reasons I just couldn’t manage the grad school commitment at the same time, so I actually dropped out after the first year. I never did get my master’s. It was a fairly entry-level position in the library at Fred Hutch that I started with, but over time I moved into roles with more responsibilities. I had a variety of roles over the years, culminating in the manager role these last five years.
I never did end up pursuing teaching, and I’m glad – I don’t think that would have been a good career for me, in hindsight. I do love libraries, though, so that worked out just fine.
What are some things that people should know about the library that they probably don’t?
I think a lot of people know what libraries do based on their experience with public libraries or academic libraries at big institutions like UW. Those are really large library systems that have a fairly well-established suite of services. At Fred Hutch, we’re a smaller institution – a hybrid institution. We’re a degree-granting institution, but not really an academic institution in the traditional sense; we’re a research institution, we’re a healthcare institution, but not a hospital. As a library, we’re just really a hybrid library, though I would definitely say we have always modeled ourselves on the academic library model, except that we have a tiny, tiny staff. We have currently five employees, including myself, so we have a smaller team to manage our suite of services. An academic library might have a staff of dozens or hundreds to manage those same services. We have resource constraints that academic libraries don’t necessarily have. They are constrained, obviously, by budget and other things, but they have a larger staff to manage the volume of work that we manage for Fred Hutch. Fred Hutch is a smaller institution overall than UW is, so the library staff is scaled somewhat appropriately for that. Still, we have a lot of services to manage, and we juggle a lot to be able to support that.
I consider our library services to be divided into two buckets. One is the traditional library services that people expect a library to do, like subscription to databases, e-journals and books – ebooks and print books – that people can access. We do InterLibrary Loan, which provides access to material that we don’t necessarily have a subscription or otherwise have access to for our own library, so we can get articles and books from a greater library network through resource-sharing arrangements. We offer reference services where we’ll search the literature for particular subjects and provide references on those subjects. So those are sort of traditional library services that may not be such a surprise.
The other bucket of our work is around scholarly communications, the dissemination of the research that gets done at the institution, and how that information is communicated to the broader scientific and academic community. The vast majority of that is done through journal articles and other publications, for example preprints, book chapters, textbooks. But for the most part, the journal article is the currency of the research effort. We’re also involved in supporting compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy, which requires that NIH-funded research be made available to the public whose tax dollars have paid for the work. So we offer support for that policy, because it is a complicated process and a lot of the researchers and research admins are really confused by how to make sure that happens so that they’re in compliance and can get their funding. A big part of our scholarly communications services is to support that policy and make sure that researchers and their papers are in compliance so that their funding can come through. We do other publications support, we do publications tracking because a lot of programs want to use publications by their program authors to track the impact of the research.
What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned about leadership over the course of your career?
I never thought I would end up in a leadership role. It wasn’t anything that interested me or a career path that I thought I would pursue. I just had no interest in being a manager and I think that’s largely because I didn’t really have any truly inspiring managers for much of my career. I didn’t really understand what the role of a manager was beyond the obvious, or the difference between a manager and a leader, and how leaders inspire. I just didn’t think that I would ever really have it in me to be a leader – although all my life, people have told me that I have natural leadership skills, but I just didn’t really have much interest in pursuing that professionally and was happy as an individual contributor. Our former library director resigned about five years ago, and the day that she resigned, she and the VP of Shared Resources at the time came and talked to the library team to announce her resignation, and basically said, “We’ve decided that Beth should be the interim leader.” I was like, “What? Are you crazy?” Without any warning - that was the first I’d heard of it, in the team meeting - so I really felt put on the spot, especially since I’d never aspired to anything like that. But something in the moment made me consider it, so I thought, “Well, I have nothing to lose, it’s temporary. We need somebody who knows the department and the team, and I think I do, and I’ve worked in enough roles in the library that I have a pretty good understanding of the bigger picture. Maybe it is time that I should stretch and grow my leadership skills.”
So I agreed to do it, and then I was surprised to discover that I loved it. I love being a manager, and I never would have expected that in a million years, but I loved the opportunity to help my team reach their potential, as individuals and team members. And we were a troubled team, we’d been through some really tough times, and morale was very low. So I feel like I really jumped into the deep end with a challenging team for a new leader. It was a team that I was a member of, which was a big challenge in and of itself, and it was a challenge to take on that situation and try and reverse it and to give the team the support and resources to rebuild the morale that had been gradually eroded over time. It was hard work and it took years, but I loved every minute of it and it was very gratifying working with the team to rebuild and reimagine what their roles were in the library and in the organization.
I guess my biggest lesson was really listening to people, and understanding that there are so many extenuating circumstances that contribute to low morale, and it’s really important to be compassionate and patient and supportive of the hard work it takes to move through that. Having been a part of the team and knowing what everyone had gone through gave me a lot of empathy to help them through that. I never wanted to be a micromanager, and giving people the freedom and space to do their best work was a huge leadership lesson for me that I had to learn by doing. I took some leadership training – I took the “Learn to Lead” and other leadership courses through our Organization Development and Learning here at Fred Hutch, which was incredibly invaluable, and I did a lot of leadership reading to figure out what kind of leader I wanted to be. Some of it was just learning on my own time, but a lot of it was learning through the incredible resources available through Fred Hutch and the incredible mentorship offered to me by my own leaders.
What’s your favorite book?
My favorite book of all time is A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. I love that book, it’s far and away my all-time favorite. I reread it every once in a while and it’s such an emotional experience.
For work-related stuff, Dare to Lead by Brené Brown is a huge favorite. I read a book right around the time I became the interim leader in the library, called Primal Leadership, that was just life-changing. They used to use it in one of the leadership training courses that was offered here. I started the class about five years before and ended up having to drop out because it coincided with the start of a major project that sucked up all my time. So I never read the book at the time but I still had it, and I put it up on the shelf in my office, where it sat for five years collecting dust. Something about that morning – when our manager resigned – made me pick it up and look at it and say, “I need to read this” and I put it in my bag to take home and read. It was weird. It happened before she resigned and before they named me as the interim lead. So it was really weird coincidental timing. So I did take it home and I did read it, and it just completely opened my eyes as to what leadership could be in the work context. It really changed my whole trajectory. I think it was one of the things that made me think that this could be more than just a temporary thing that I just put up with until we hired somebody else to lead the department. After I read that, and I really started getting my feet wet in the job, I realized how much I loved it, and how much I wanted to keep doing it, and reading that book was one of the sea changes for me.
So, you show and breed whippets. Why whippets?
I actually started in greyhounds, and whippets are a smaller version of the greyhound. I grew up with dogs, my family has multiple dogs all the time – we’re a dog-loving family. But I never had any allegiance to a particular breed. One day I was out walking my dog, who was a sheltie-terrier mix – this was thirty years ago – and I was at Magnusson Park with her, long before it was a dedicated dog park, and I ran into a guy who had two greyhounds. I was completely awestruck. I went home and started researching and got a couple greyhounds, and from there I ended up downsizing to whippets. They’re such great little dogs – they’re super interactive and fun and devoted and very athletic. They love to run and they love to chase stuff. I do show but my real love is the performance events that whippets participate in, primarily lure coursing and amateur racing. I’m a lure coursing judge and active working member of my local whippet clubs as well as national breed and performance clubs.
How many dogs do you have currently?
I currently have six, ranging in age from one year to 13 – I have two 13-year-olds.
Rate your dogs: most likely to….?
Jonah is my oldest dog, he’s 13, and he’s the dog most likely to be piled on by other dogs in the house. They all love him and he’s super tolerant and they just pile on top of him like a big huge dog pile. He’s on the bottom all the time, it’s just the way it is. I also have his sister, whose name is Seven. She’s the dog most likely to bark at stuff in the neighborhood – she’s the neighborhood snoop-ervisor.
My next oldest dog is her son, his name is Austin, and he is 8 years old. He’s just a really mellow, easygoing guy, easy to get along with. He’s kind of drama-free, just the most likely to go with the flow in any situation. The next oldest one is Raven, who is 4, and she is the feistiest. She’s very vocal and very outgoing. Once she decides she’s going to give kisses to somebody, there’s no stopping her. She’ll do it. You can’t stop her. And she’s the smallest, so you’d think she’d be the easiest to control, but no, she’s the most determined.
The next oldest one in age is Fyvush, who is 2 years old, and he is most likely to have something to say about everything that happens in life. He’s very talkative and never shuts up, ever. And then I also have his younger half-sister, Ebi, who is a year old, and she’s the sweetest and the most likely to get everybody chasing her out in the yard. She loves to be the “bunny.”
|
|
Pictured: Beth's dog Jonah (foreground) with his litter brother, racing in almost perfect unison.
|
|
|
FRED HUTCH/UNIVERISTY OF WASHINGTON/SEATTLE CHILDREN'S CANCER CONSORTIUM
1100 FAIRVIEW AVE. N., SEATTLE, WA 98109
Award number P30 CA015704-48
|
|
|
|
|
