UNMC cell biologists love of discovery Helps Build
UNMCs Dental Research Program, Find Answers to Oral cancer
The tenth floor of the Lied Transplant Center on the University of Nebraska
Medical Center campus in Omaha, is like a second home for UNMC cell biologists,
Margaret Wheelock, Ph.D., and Keith Johnson, Ph.D. The couple, who is married,
has a birdseye view of the research progress taking place at UNMC and clear
goals for how their research could someday help people with oral cancer.
They dont see patients. What theyre looking at cant be seen with
the naked eye.
Drs. Wheelock and Johnson are busy studying basic cell biology and conducting
new experiments with the goal of understanding things that arent understood
currently about the biological process of oral cancer. The professors from
the UNMC College of Dentistry, have several large funded grants from the
National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Defense. Theyve
submitted three more grants and one was just renewed for four years.
Each year, more than 30,000 new cases of cancer of the oral cavity and
pharynx are diagnosed and more than 8,000 deaths occur due to oral cancer,
according the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The five-year
survival rate for these cancers is about 50 percent. Methods used
to treat oral cancers — surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy —
are disfiguring and costly.
The cause of oral cancers is associated with cigarette, cigar or pipe
smoking, use of smokeless tobacco, and excessive use of alcohol.
Drs. Wheelock and Johnson came to UNMC last year from Ohio, to spend
more time doing research.
Theyre extremely talented researchers and they really love research,
said John Reinhardt, D.D.S., dean of the UNMC College of Dentistry. Were
very lucky to have them.
We are trying to raise our level of research. Their presence enhances
the dental colleges research program and cements our research role at
UNMC. Few dental schools have as strong a connection to a major cancer
center, as we have here with the UNMC Eppley Cancer Center.
The goal is to put together a designated oral cancer center. We have
the right people. Thats exciting for the future.
Drs. Wheelock and Johnson are studying cadherins, which are involved
in the mechanism whereby cells recognize one another. They think cadherins
play a role in causing cancer to spread to other parts of the body.
They first discovered cadherins while studying cancer cell metastasis.
Metastasis of cancer cells makes cancer deadly.
If you can modify the information in the cells, maybe that will decrease
the cells metastatic potential, Dr. Wheelock said.
They hope they will ultimately find a clinical application for their
work. One of the goals is to help the clinical scientists identify tumors
that are likely to spread into the jaw bone.
Although most of their fellow dental colleagues are in Lincoln where
the UNMC College of Dentistry is based, they are collaborating with UNMC
head and neck surgeons, including Bill Lydiatt, M.D., and Dan Lydiatt,
M.D., in Omaha, as well as College of Dentistry oral pathology researchers,
Don Cohen, D.M.D., and Indraneel Bhattacharyya, D.D.S.
The clinicians have all these burning questions, Dr. Wheelock said.
If we could say this cell does this or that, the patient could be saved
a lot of trauma, for example, by not taking bone out unnecessarily.
Both researchers grew up on farms. Dr. Wheelock is a native of Cresco,
Iowa, and Dr. Johnson a native of Trimont, Minn. They met in 1977 while
in graduate school in Minnesota. Except for a year or two, theyve been
together since.