Research Impact February 2012: A Quarterly Update from the Office of the Senior Vice President for Research Cancer Center Director Recruiting New Faculty to GHSU Drs. John Janik and Olivier Rixe have joined GHSU as new faculty in the Cancer Center. Janik received his M.D. degree at the Ohio State University College of Medicine and completed a fellowship in Medical Oncology and Hematology at Case Western Reserve University. He then joined the Biological Response Modifiers Program of the National Cancer Institute, participating in early trials of hematopoietic growth factors, monoclonal antibodies, interleukin 2 and other cytokines. Before joining GHSU, Janik researched immunologic treatments for solid tumors and receptor-directed treatments for hematologic malignancy as Co-Director of the Metabolism Branch Clinical Trial Team at the National Cancer Institute. He also identified survivin as a target for T cell lymphoma therapy while researching resistance to monoclonal antibody therapy in hematologic malignancy through gene expression profiling. Janik served as a member and chair of the National Cancer Institute’s Institutional Review Board for 10 years. Rixe received his medical degree from the Pierre and Marie Curie University of Paris. He also completed four years of training in medical oncology and internal medicine and earned a Ph.D. in molecular biology in Paris. He worked at the National Cancer Institute’s Medical Oncology Branch as a staff clinician and at the University of Cincinnati as a Professor of Medicine, Director of the Experimental Therapeutics Program and Research Director of the Brain Tumor Center before joining GHSU. He clinical research of sunitinib, which was published in The New England Journal of Medicine, led to the drug’s FDA approval for kidney cancer treatment. His study of the VEGFR inhibitor, axitinib, to treat pancreatic cancer was published in The Lancet. Axitinib is in the process of FDA approval.
Dr. Olivier Rixe, M.D., Ph.D.