A BETTER WAY

NORM PACE, PHD: CAVE EXPLORER, “FATHER OF MICROBIAL ECOLOGY,”

STAGE IV MELANOMA SURVIVOR A Better Way

BY TAYLOR ABARCA

THIS PHOTO AND COVER PHOTO BY GLENN ASAKAWA, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO

Cancer doesn’t discriminate. Cancer doesn’t care if you have a PhD. It doesn’t care that you have held faculty positions at top universities. It couldn’t care less that you are a distinguished professor of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at the University of Colorado Boulder. It also doesn’t care about your upcoming trip to Washington, DC to be awarded the 2019 National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Award in Early Earth and Life Sciences Stanley Miller Medal. It doesn’t care that you’re widely known as the “father of microbial ecology.”

Norman (Norm) R. Pace, PhD, knows first-hand that cancer is not particular. A shocking late stage melanoma diagnosis in 2017 was, in his words, a “chilling” discovery that nearly took his life.

An unwelcome surprise “The morning of my diagnosis I got out of the shower and had a seizure, which caused me to fall and whack my head,” recalls Norm, 76. “I was able to raise hell and get the attention of my granddaughter who was visiting. If she wouldn’t have been there, I would have died.”

Norm lives alone in Boulder, Colorado. It was pure coincidence that his granddaughter was there that day.

“We drove to the hospital where I went through all the usual testing – MRI, blood work, the whole deal,” he explains. “When I saw the scans, I wasn’t particularly hopeful. There were slugs of tumors all over my body and brain. It was chilling to hear the diagnosis.”

The diagnosis was stage IV melanoma. Often, melanoma makes an appearance as an abnormal mole or even a black spot under a nail. In Norm’s case, there were no spots on his body, and it wasn’t until the cancer nearly killed him that he even knew it existed.

“It was shocking to hear that I had melanoma,” he says. “If you looked at me you would have never thought I had it.”

Two days later Norm had surgery to remove two masses, one 3.5-centimeter and the other 1.5-centimeter, from his brain. Unfortunately, there were more, but additional tumors were too deeply interwoven in his brain to be removed.

Second opinions save lives After his surgery, Norm, with the encouragement of his colleagues, decided to pursue a second opinion before continuing with his treatment. He was referred to the University of Colorado Cancer Center at the Anschutz Medical Campus, where Karl Lewis, MD, associate professor in the Division of Medical Oncology, took over his care.

“When Norm arrived, he was very sick, recovering from his recent craniotomy and still with active brain metastases,” says Lewis, who is also the associate director of the Melanoma Research Clinics at the University

of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. “Fortunately, we have effective medications that can result in significant long-term control of the melanoma.” Norm was put on a treatment regimen of pembrolizumab, commonly known as Keytruda. Keytruda, an immunotherapy, works by making cancer cells visible to the immune system so that they can be eliminated by the body’s killer T-cells.

“Keytruda saved me,” says Norm. “I could physically see the tumors in my body changing. They turned hard and red

before they shrank away. It reminded me of parasites that move around the body.”

For the past two years, Norm has been travelling to CU Cancer Center once every three weeks for treatment. He also had two gamma knife surgeries – a kind of precisely targeted radiation – to remove the remaining tumors in his brain.

“The whole experience at Anschutz has been very impressive,” says Norm. “I am absolutely delighted. Treatment has been far more successful than I ever thought it would be.”

More than cancer In April, Norm traveled to Washington, DC to accept the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Award in Early Earth and Life Sciences Stanley Miller Medal, something he thought he would not have the opportunity to do. The prestigious award is given out once every five years to experts in the field of research on Earth’s early development as a planet. According to the NAS, Norm earned the award for “pioneering work into the diversity of life on Earth.”

During his career as a distinguished professor emeritus of molecular, cellular and developmental biology at CU Boulder, Norm developed gene sequencing tools that allow scientists to identify virtually all microorganisms on the planet.

“When I started studying microorganisms there wasn’t a great way to identify them because they don’t grow in labs like they do in their natural environments,” he explains. “I thought to myself ‘there has to be a better way.’”

With the knowledge of his friend Carl Woese, PhD, (famous for defining Archaea as a new domain of life), Norm developed this better way. Norm learned that by sequencing and comparing the genes in rRNA of an unknown organism to the genes in the rRNA of an identified organism, he could learn a lot about the relationship between the two.

This led to a paradigm shift in the study of microbiology, paving the way for scientists all over the world to identify new microorganisms by sequencing their genes rather than trying to culture them in a lab, something that had never been done before. Basically, Norm’s work revolutionized the way scientists categorize life on Earth.

Not only did Norm throw open the gates of genetic microbiology, he also has helped mapped the world beneath our feet. Before his cancer diagnosis, Norm spent his free time in the darkness and vastness of unexplored caves. In the 1970s he led an expedition that mapped the longest cave system in Colorado – the Groaning Cave located in the White River National Forest.