The spirit of Winship

Atlanta remembers Robert L. “Bobby” Rearden as a successful businessman and a member of the bid team that brought the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games to Atlanta. Winship remembers him as a steadfast supporter and a man of great spirit and compassion.

Rearden passed away in January 2015 while undergoing treatment for a recurrence of leukemia, and in his honor the Robert L. “Bobby” Rearden Spirit of Winship Award was launched to recognize those who demonstrate exemplary service, teamwork, and a commitment to public good. The first recipients of the

Sanda to lead prostate cancer biomarker study

The Emory, Harvard, and University of Washington Prostate Cancer Biomarker Center has received a $4.2 million grant from the National Cancer Institute’s Early Detection Research Network to develop multiplex tests for detecting prostate cancer and improving survival benefits. Winship member Martin Sanda, chair of the Department of Urology, is the principal investigator of the multi-center collaboration. He is joined at Emory by Eugene Huang, professor of biostatistics and bioinformatics at Rollins School of Public Health; David Schuster, director of the Emory Division of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging; and Carlos Moreno, associate professor in the Emory Departments of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Biomedical Informatics. W award are Jessica Neely, a physician assistant in the Department of Hematology and Medical Oncology, and Julie Whitehead, a volunteer in the Winship Patient and Family Resource Center. Neely and Whitehead were chosen because they exemplify Winship’s culture of caring.

The Spirit of Winship Award will be given annually to a faculty or staff member and a volunteer and will include a monetary award to be made in the name of each award recipient to an area of their choosing within Winship. W

Novel therapy programs cancer cell death

Genetic mutations in lung cancers make cancerous cells in the body resistant to standard treatment therapies such as chemotherapy and radiation. Winship cancer biologist Xingming Deng (pictured above right) and his lab have identified two novel agents that could reverse the resistance of cancer cells to treatment.

Deng is the principal investigator of two R01 grants from the National Institutes of Health aimed at investigating these agents, and totaling over $3.6 million. Deng is hoping that a new class of anti-cancer agents will lead to the improvement of lung cancer outcomes and survival. If successful, Deng will have developed two novel targeted therapies for lung cancer as well as for other common malignancies such as multiple myeloma, leukemia, and breast cancer. Deng anticipates these new lines of therapy will be ready for clinical trials for patients at Emory by 2020. W

New immunotherapy drugs can help signal the immune system to attack. Here an individual T cell (blue) destroys a cancer cell.