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Testifying Before Senate

Posted on by Lawrence Tabak, D.D.S., Ph.D.

Dr. Tabak seated at table speaking and gesturing
On May 4, I testified on Capitol Hill regarding the President’s FY 2024 Funding Request and Budget Justification for NIH. My testimony was delivered before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies. Also testifying were several other member of the NIH leadership. They included Doug Lowy, principal deputy director, National Cancer Institute; Josh Gordon, director, National Institute of Mental Health; Richard Hodes, director, National Institute on Aging; Nora Volkow, director, National Institute on Drug Abuse. The hearing took place at the Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. Credit: NIH

Welcoming Three Members of Congress to NCI Frederick

Posted on by Lawrence Tabak, D.D.S., Ph.D.

It was a pleasure to welcome Congressional dignitaries from Maryland to NIH’s National Cancer Institute (NCI) at Frederick, MD. They took part in a roundtable discussion highlighting research at NCI Frederick in support of the Cancer Moonshot initiative. Afterwards, they visited a lab to see patient-derived models of cancer under a microscope. In this photo from the July 22 visit, I have my hand raised and standing to my left are (l-r): Senator Chris Van Hollen, Congressman David Trone, and Senator Ben Cardin. To my right is Doug Lowy, Acting NCI director. Doug and Xavier Becerra, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, also greeted these Congressional leaders and helped to direct the roundtable discussion. Credit: NIH

NCI Support for Basic Science Paves Way for Kidney Cancer Drug Belzutifan

Posted on by Norman "Ned" Sharpless, M.D., National Cancer Institute

Belzutifan, Shrinking kidney cancer. woman with superimposed kidney tumor. Arrows suggest shrinking

There’s exciting news for people with von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) disease, a rare genetic disorder that can lead to cancerous and non-cancerous tumors in multiple organs, including the brain, spinal cord, kidney, and pancreas. In August 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved belzutifan (Welireg), a new drug that has been shown in a clinical trial led by National Cancer Institute (NCI) researchers to shrink some tumors associated with VHL disease [1], which is caused by inherited mutations in the VHL tumor suppressor gene.

As exciting as this news is, relatively few people have this rare disease. The greater public health implication of this advancement is for people with sporadic, or non-inherited, clear cell kidney cancer, which is by far the most common subtype of kidney cancer, with more than 70,000 cases and about 14,000 deaths per year. Most cases of sporadic clear cell kidney cancer are caused by spontaneous mutations in the VHL gene.

This advancement is also a great story of how decades of support for basic science through NCI’s scientists in the NIH Intramural Research Program and its grantees through extramural research funding has led to direct patient benefit. And it’s a reminder that we never know where basic science discoveries might lead.

Belzutifan works by disrupting the process by which the loss of VHL in a tumor turns on a series of molecular processes. These processes involve the hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) transcription factor and one of its subunits, HIF-2α, that lead to tumor formation.

The unraveling of the complex relationship among VHL, the HIF pathway, and cancer progression began in 1984, when Bert Zbar, Laboratory of Immunobiology, NCI-Frederick; and Marston Linehan, NCI’s Urologic Oncology Branch, set out to find the gene responsible for clear cell kidney cancer. At the time, there were no effective treatments for advanced kidney cancer, and 80 percent of patients died within two years.

Zbar and Linehan started by studying patients with sporadic clear cell kidney cancer, but then turned their focus to investigations of people affected with VHL disease, which predisposes a person to developing clear cell kidney cancer. By studying the patients and the genetic patterns of tumors collected from these patients, the researchers hypothesized that they could find genes responsible for kidney cancer.

Linehan established a clinical program at NIH to study and manage VHL patients, which facilitated the genetic studies. It took nearly a decade, but, in 1993, Linehan, Zbar, and Michael Lerman, NCI-Frederick, identified the VHL gene, which is mutated in people with VHL disease. They soon discovered that tumors from patients with sporadic clear cell kidney cancer also have mutations in this gene.

Subsequently, with NCI support, William G. Kaelin Jr., Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, discovered that VHL is a tumor suppressor gene that, when inactivated, leads to the accumulation of HIF.

Another NCI grantee, Gregg L. Semenza, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, identified HIF as a transcription factor. And Peter Ratcliffe, University of Oxford, United Kingdom, discovered that HIF plays a role in blood vessel development and tumor growth.

Kaelin and Ratcliffe simultaneously showed that the VHL protein tags a subunit of HIF for destruction when oxygen levels are high. These results collectively answered a very old question in cell biology: How do cells sense the intracellular level of oxygen?

Subsequent studies by Kaelin, with NCI’s Richard Klausner and Linehan, revealed the critical role of HIF in promoting the growth of clear cell kidney cancer. This work ultimately focused on one member of the HIF family, the HIF-2α subunit, as the key mediator of clear cell kidney cancer growth.

The fundamental work of Kaelin, Semenza, and Ratcliffe earned them the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. It also paved the way for drug discovery efforts that target numerous points in the pathway leading to clear cell kidney cancer, including directly targeting the transcriptional activity of HIF-2α with belzutifan.

Clinical trials of belzutifan, including several supported by NCI, demonstrated potent anti-cancer activity in VHL-associated kidney cancer, as well as other VHL-associated tumors, leading to the aforementioned recent FDA approval. This is an important development for patients with VHL disease, providing a first-in-class therapy that is effective and well-tolerated.

We believe this is only the beginning for belzutifan’s use in patients with cancer. A number of trials are now studying the effectiveness of belzutifan for sporadic clear cell kidney cancer. A phase 3 trial is ongoing, for example, to look at the effectiveness of belzutifan in treating people with advanced kidney cancer. And promising results from a phase 2 study show that belzutifan, in combination with cabozantinib, a widely used agent to treat kidney cancer, shrinks tumors in patients previously treated for metastatic clear cell kidney cancer [2].

This is a great scientific story. It shows how studies of familial cancer and basic cell biology lead to effective new therapies that can directly benefit patients. I’m proud that NCI’s support for basic science, both intramurally and extramurally, is making possible many of the discoveries leading to more effective treatments for people with cancer.

References:

[1] Belzutifan for Renal Cell Carcinoma in von Hippel-Lindau Disease. Jonasch E, Donskov F, Iliopoulos O, Rathmell WK, Narayan VK, Maughan BL, Oudard S, Else T, Maranchie JK, Welsh SJ, Thamake S, Park EK, Perini RF, Linehan WM, Srinivasan R; MK-6482-004 Investigators. N Engl J Med. 2021 Nov 25;385(22):2036-2046.

[2] Phase 2 study of the oral hypoxia-inducible factor 2α (HIF-2α) inhibitor MK-6482 in combination with cabozantinib in patients with advanced clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). Choueiri TK et al. J Clin Oncol. 2021 Feb 20;39(6_suppl): 272-272.

Links:
Von Hippel-Lindau Disease (Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Center/National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences/NIH)

Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma (National Cancer Institute/NIH)

Belzutifan Approved to Treat Tumors Linked to Inherited Disorder VHL, Cancer Currents Blog, National Cancer Institute, September 21, 2021.

The Long Road to Understanding Kidney Cancer (Intramural Research Program/NIH)

[Note: Acting NIH Director Lawrence Tabak has asked the heads of NIH’s institutes and centers to contribute occasional guest posts to the blog as a way to highlight some of the cool science that they support and conduct. This is the first in the series of NIH institute and center guest posts that will run until a new permanent NIH director is in place.]


Welcoming First Lady Jill Biden to NIH!

Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins

Video Event

It was wonderful to have First Lady Jill Biden pay a virtual visit to NIH on February 3, 2021, on the eve of World Cancer Day. Dr. Biden joined me, National Cancer Institute (NCI) Director Ned Sharpless, and several NCI scientists to discuss recent advances in fighting cancer. On behalf of the entire NIH community, I thanked the First Lady for her decades of advocacy on behalf of cancer education, prevention, and research. To view the event, go to 53:20 in this video. Credit: Adapted from White House video.


First Virtual WALS Lecture

Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins

NIH Lecture-Remote with Dr. James Allison
With sponsored travel and large gatherings now limited to stop the spread of COVID-19, NIH has been making lots of logistical adjustments. That includes holding the first “virtual” NIH Director’s Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series (WALS) on March 11, 2020. I started things off from Bethesda, Maryland by looking into a video monitor in a large, mostly empty conference room and introducing Jim Allison, the cancer immunotherapy giant and recent Nobelist at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. In Houston, Jim walked to the podium in a mostly empty hall (top left), called for his slides, and delivered a roughly 45-minute presentation titled Immune Checkpoint Blockade in Cancer Therapy: Historical Perspective, New Opportunities, and Prospects for Cures. Taking it all in online was a large NIH audience that included next to me another cancer immunotherapy giant, Steve Rosenberg of NIH’s National Cancer Institute (bottom right). At the conclusion of the presentation, NIH staff emailed questions to the podium in Houston, where Jim provided the answers. Still left to be worked out in this virtual format is how to share afterwards in the real-world coffee, refreshments, and stimulating conversation. Credit: NIH

Crowdsourcing Key Cancer Questions

Posted on by Dr. Francis Collins

Young scientists having a discussion in a laboratory setting

Credit: National Cancer Institute, Rhoda Baer (Photographer)

How does aspirin protect against cancer? How does obesity increase the risk of cancer? What genetic, epigenetic, biologic, behavioral, or environmental factors enable some people with highly lethal cancers to survive beyond expectation?

These are just a few perplexing issues that were chosen as part of the Provocative Questions Initiative of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), one of the 27 Institutes and Centers that make up the NIH [1]. The initiative was launched to identify questions or problems about cancer that, for whatever reason, have been neglected in the past. The hope was that by crowdsourcing across the entire research community, the most important questions would be identified — potentially yielding game-changing advances in preventing, diagnosing, and treating all forms of cancer.

Although cancer rates are declining about 1% per year [2], cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States, surpassed only by heart disease. In 2009, 567,614 people died from some form of cancer—1,555 people every day. We’ve been waging war on this disease for decades now. But we now have the tools to address many more questions.