The Case Comprehensive Cancer Center is pleased to announce the appointment of Blanton S. Tolbert, PhD as the first Associate Director for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center (Case CCC). This role will complement his recent appointment as Vice Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusive Excellence for the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine.

The newly created Associate Director role will coordinate and facilitate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center. The Associate Director will focus on continuing to create and sustain a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment that will support our Cancer Center community in the fight against cancer and quest for health equity.

“As a basic scientist, I am acutely aware of the important contributions that diverse perspectives bring to scientific discovery," said Tolbert. "And as a group leader, I believe it is my responsibility to meet trainees where they are and to help them achieve their personal best.”

As Associate Director, Tolbert will focus on the following areas:

Tolbert, who has been faculty at Case Western Reserve since 2012 and a full Professor since 2019, is recognized for his academic leadership, passion for research excellence and dedication to mentoring diverse trainees. He has a proven track record of mentoring scientists at all levels and providing trainees an environment that prepares them for their future career ambitions. He has served as principal investigator of a National Science Foundation-funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program in Chemistry, and was the recipient of several National Institutes of Health (NIH) Diversity Supplements. He received the Morton L. Mandel Award for Excellence in Research and Service in 2016 from the Department of Chemistry, and was a UCITE (University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education) Mentors Fellow in 2012. He was appointed the Rudolph and Susan Rense Professor of Chemistry in 2021.

Tolbert is a member of the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Center for RNA Science and Therapeutics. He leads a diverse research group that aims to understand the basic mechanisms by RNA and related retroviruses usurp cellular proteins to regulate gene expression. His group leverages their understanding of the basic molecular biology of these viruses to identify novel targets for therapeutic intervention.

Tolbert is the principal investigator on several NIH grants including the Nuclear Gene Expression Project of the U54 Center for HIV RNA Studies. In 2021, he was appointed chairperson of the NIH Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council (OARAC). He chaired the OARAC Strategies to Support, Retain, and Expand the Pool of Early Stage Investigators panel discussion on May 5, 2021. Tolbert is also a member of the NIH HVCD study section and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Postdoctoral Enrichment Program (PDEP) Advisory Board. He is on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Biological Chemistry and Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews.

Please join us in congratulating Blanton Tolbert on his new role!

Ruth Keri, PhD, staff in the Department of Cancer Biology and associate director for basic research at the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Charis Eng, MD, PhD, chair of the Genomic Medicine Institute, have received a two-year, $400,000 grant from Cleveland Clinic to establish the Cleveland Clinic Breast Cancer Center of Excellence, which will advance breast cancer research.

Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer worldwide, and also disproportionately impacts patients in Cuyahoga County with new cases occurring more frequently compared to other Ohio counties and the United States. While treatment advances have improved survival rates, breast cancer is a highly complex disease that differs greatly between patients as well as within individual tumors, underscoring the need to identify factors controlling disease progression and therapeutic resistance.

“While the ecosystem surrounding a tumor, or the tumor microenvironment, is known to contribute to cancer progression and the differences observed in patient outcomes, further investigation is needed to fully elucidate the tumor microenvironment’s role and inform clinical management,” said Eng. “With this grant, we will build a research team that will advance the understanding of how the tumor microenvironment modulates breast cancer progression.”

The center’s research team will be co-led by Drs. Keri and Eng and will include Jennifer Yu, MD, PhD, staff in the Department of Cancer Biology, and Lily Wang, PhD, associate staff in the Department of Translational Hematology and Oncology Research; all are members of the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center. The four investigators have established research programs focused on understudied aspects of the breast cancer tumor microenvironment with ongoing projects examining the bidirectional communication between breast cancer cells and the extracellular matrix, microbiome, nerves and immune system.

“Our aims are to discover how the breast tumor microenvironment promotes disease progression and metastasis, develop state-of-the-art technologies that support our work and generate new models of understudied forms of breast cancer,” said Keri. “Importantly, we will emphasize analyses of Cleveland Clinic patient samples to ensure the relevance of our discoveries to Cleveland patients as well as the larger community.”

The Cancer Center Seminar Series will continue today, October 15 in the Wolstein Research Building Auditorium. This interdisciplinary seminar series addresses cutting-edge clinical, translational, and basic research topics in cancer and is a focal point of the educational and inter-programmatic activities of the Cancer Center. CME credit is available for those who attend seminars. 

Medical Director, Molecular Diagnostics Lab, University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center

Professor, Department of Pathology; Member, Immune Oncology Program, Case Comprehensive Cancer Center, Case Western Reserve School of Medicine

October 22, 2021- Homecoming weekend. No seminar

October 29, 2021 - External Advisory Committee meeting. No seminar

Physician, Radiology, Neuroradiology/Diagnostic Radiology, University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center; Clinical Director, MRI, University Hospitals

Assistant Professor, Department of Radiology; Member, Cancer Imaging Program, Case Comprehensive Cancer Center, Case Western Reserve School of Medicine

Professor, Epidemiology, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine

Director, Center for Environmental Health and Technology

Head, Environmental Health Section, Department of Epidemiology

Brown University

Junior faculty members and established faculty wishing to refocus are invited to submit proposals for career development projects of up to $40,000 to be funded by the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center (Case CCC) - Tazania - Uganda HIV-associated Lung Cancer Collaborative. This training program is funded by the NCI U54 mechanism and is a collaboration between Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), the Case CCC, University Hospitals (UH), Makerere University, the Joint Clinical Research Center (JCRC), Uganda Cancer Institute, National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) Tanzania, Muhimbili National Hospital, and the Ocean Road Cancer Institute (ORCI). Full-time faculty at or above instructor-level at any of the aforementioned institutions are eligible.

The Case Comprehensive Cancer Center, with funds from its American Cancer Society Institutional Research Grant, will provide seed money to foster cancer research by junior faculty who have no current national grant support of their own. Investigators in the CWRU School of Medicine, University Hospitals of Cleveland, and Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine as well as in other schools and colleges affiliated with Case Western Reserve University are eligible. Grants, not to exceed $40,000, will be awarded to investigators who intend to gather preliminary data to be used in seeking future and independently funded programs.

The American Cancer Society Institutional Research Grant at the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center was also recently awarded a Diversity Equity and Inclusion supplement. Persons from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups are particularly encouraged to apply.

The Clinical and Translational Pilot Award Program is funded through the NIH National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, which defines translation as “the process of turning observations in the laboratory, clinic and community into interventions that improve the health of individuals and the public — from diagnostics and therapeutics to medical procedures and behavioral changes.”

The CTSC will use funds to support technologies and methods/processes with the potential to directly impact human health. Annual Pilots will be prioritized for projects that optimize an established discovery and move it towards patients. Examples could be drug and device development, interventions, and research methods and processes to improve patient health. Pilot projects must be focused on translational science, i.e., focused on understanding a scientific or operational principle underlying a step of the translational process with the goal of developing generalizable principles to accelerate translational research.

Up to six grants will be awarded with budgets limited to $50,000 in direct costs.

Given the growth of the single-cell biology field and the rapid increase in available data, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI)’s newest funding opportunity seeks to support computational experts to advance tools and resources that make it possible to gain greater insights into health and disease from existing single-cell biology datasets. The CZI Single-Cell Biology Data Insights Request for Applications (RFA) invites applications for projects that will advance the fields of single-cell biology and data science.

Projects should address computational challenges and bottlenecks associated with boosting the utility and insight from available single-cell biology datasets. Projects may include dedicated efforts to improve existing computational tools and standards, benchmarking classes of tools, integration of available datasets to enable greater biological insight, development of new features that support interoperability of current data or tools, and other major challenges brought forward. This RFA is the first of three cycles planned for the coming years, with successful projects being 18 months in duration.

Invited study discussant, Johnie Rose, MD, PhD, called the correlation between Medicaid expansion and changes in 30-day mortality a critical research question. Dr. Rose is Assistant Professor in the Center for Community Health Integration at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and Preventive Medicine Residency Program Director at the University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center. He is also a member of the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Dr. Eric Klein, chairman of the Glickman Urological and Kidney Institute at Cleveland Clinic and member of the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center, has been at the forefront of liquid biopsy. He also works in cancer biomarker research, which is the study of certain abnormalities in the DNA of tumors and levels of specific proteins present in tumors.