Jean Grem, M.D., the head gastrointestinal cancer researcher/clinician at the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md., will be joining the UNMC Eppley Cancer Center this spring to direct the Gastrointestinal Oncology Program and the Oncology Drug Development Program.
She also will serve as professor in the oncology/hematology section of the Department of Internal Medicine.
“Dr. Grem is an outstanding recruit,” said Harold M. Maurer, M.D., UNMC chancellor. “We could not have done it without the Tobacco Settlement Funds. She will be leading a critical area in our cancer treatment efforts.”
Funded through Legislative Bill 692, the Nebraska Tobacco Settlement Biomedical Research Development Fund provided a total of $10 million in fiscal year 2001-02 to the state’s four biomedical research institutions – UNMC, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Creighton University and Boys Town National Research Hospital.
The four institutions have elected to use the funds in three strategic areas – to recruit and retain outstanding biomedical researchers, to support key research programs by obtaining and upgrading major research equipment, and to support research projects to improve racial and ethnic minority health in Nebraska.
Dr. Cowan: “A great hire”
“Dr. Grem is a great hire for the UNMC Eppley Cancer Center,” said Ken Cowan, M.D., Ph.D., director of the UNMC Eppley Cancer Center. “She is a nationally recognized expert on gastrointestinal cancer and the area of drug development and evaluation and has had a very successful clinical trials program at NCI.
“The Tobacco Settlement money was crucial for her recruitment, as it will provide the funds for her to set up a core lab at UNMC for Pharmacokinetic/ Pharmacodynamic research. She will be able to assist anyone at UNMC in running Phase I drug development clinical studies involving cancer and non-cancer research.”
Helping treat cancer patients
Dr. Grem is currently collaborating with a Cooperative Oncology Group to develop a multi-institutional clinical trial to determine the effectiveness of new drug combinations in treating patients with cancers arising in the colon and rectum. This trial will be opened at UNMC.
Her research involves looking for specific markers in tumors to determine if it might be possible to predict whether a patient is likely to respond to a particular drug. This research may one day allow oncologists to select the most appropriate drugs to use based on the specific molecular features of the tumor. She also is trying to determine if the drugs get into patients at appropriate levels and into the appropriate targets in the tumor cells.
She wants to determine if the proteins in these cancer cells are being inhibited. It’s a critical piece in solving the mystery of cancer, Dr. Cowan said.
Collaborating across campus
Dr. Grem will collaborate with the UNMC College of Pharmacy, Dr. Cowan said, and will be using state of the art separation techniques such as high performance liquid chromatography and gas chromatography with various detection methods for measuring drugs in biological samples including ultraviolet, fluorescence and mass spectral detection.
Dr. Grem’s background
A native of Oak Park, Ill., Dr. Grem earned her undergraduate degree with honors from Purdue University and her medical degree with honors from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. She did her internship and residency training at the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics and a clinical and research fellowship in medical oncology at the University of Wisconsin Clinical Cancer Center.
Following her fellowship, Dr. Grem joined the National Cancer Institute in 1986 and has worked at the NCI ever since. During this time, she was a colleague of Dr. Cowan, who worked at the NCI for 21 years before coming to UNMC in 1999.
She was initially a senior investigator in the NCI Investigational Drug Branch before being recruited to the former Medicine Branch in 1989. Since last year, she has held the position of head of the Gastrointestinal Malignancies Section, where her research focuses on the biochemical and molecular pharmacology of antimetabolites and investigational anti-cancer agents in an effort to develop therapeutic strategies for cancers in the gastrointestinal tract. Gastrointestinal cancers include colon, rectal, stomach, pancreas, liver, esophageal and bile duct cancer.
Prodigious researcher
A prodigious researcher, Dr. Grem has had more than 150 articles published in scientific journals. She presently serves as associate editor of Clinical Cancer Research and the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and is a member of the editorial board of Cancer Chemotherapy and Pharmacology. While doing her fellowship at Wisconsin, Dr. Grem was involved in one of the initial Phase I clinical trials of the cancer drug paclitaxel (Taxol®).
At the NCI, her research group includes five research nurses, two data managers, two oncology fellows, and five other medical oncologists. She currently has eight open clinical protocols with about 50 active patients.
Building a clinical program
“I was very impressed by the enthusiasm and collegiality of the faculty and staff during my initial visit to UNMC,” Dr. Grem said. “I am excited about the opportunity to help build a multi-disciplinary, translational clinical research program. I hope to develop strong collaborations with faculty in gastroenterology, surgical oncology, radiation oncology and the UNMC Eppley Cancer Center.”
She expects to begin working at UNMC in the late spring of 2003.