MU Department of Medicine 2011-2013 Annual Report Feb. 2014 | Page 28

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Annual Report

University of Missouri- Columbia

Hematology/medical oncology
Letter From The Director

The Hematology/Medical Oncology
Division added five new clinical faculty
members in 2011 and 2012 including:
A. Mosharraf Hossain, MD, MPH, Rashmi
Ramasubbaiah, MD, MS, Dong Xiang, MD,
MS, Ravi Bobba, MD, and Praveen Garg,
MD, and one new research faculty member,
Indira Benakanakere, PhD. In 2013, we
added one new research faculty member,
Chunfa Huang, PhD. Our division was
prolific in terms of scholarly activities with
64 publications. In addition, faculty and
fellows presented 33 posters/abstracts
at national meetings in the last two years.
Members of our faculty are either principle
investigators or investigators on over 66
clinical trials. Drs. Raza, Freter, Doll, and
Hossain received 3rd place for their poster
Epidemiologic and survival characteristics
of breast cancer (BC) among the U.S. Asian
Indian and Pakistani women compared
with other U.S. population groups: A SEER
database study at the Mizzou 2013 Health
Sciences Research Day. We established
a division research laboratory at Ellis
Fischel Cancer Center that is headed by
Drs. Freter and Benakanakere. There has
been one established research program
in development of therapeutic anticancer
agents (Drs. Benakanakere, Freter, Bobba,
and Garg, Lee Sleightholm, and Tyler
Johnson). The research of this laboratory
resulted in one patent as well as one
medical student poster presentation
which won 3rd place at the Mizzou 2011
Health Sciences Research Day. Anand

Patel and Alex Villeda, medical students,

by our Cerner partners to build our

along with Tyler Johnson, working in the

chemotherapy CPOE functionality. This

Hematology/Medical Oncology research

process is now in place with the provision of

lab under the direction of Dr. Freter, placed

maintenance and continued throughput of

first in the local Missouri ACP meeting

power plans as new plans become available

poster presentation and will move on

and old ones obsolesce. We have all taken

to the state competition. In addition,

great pride in a division that is advancing

the laboratory’s research resulted in the

and maturing in its scholarly and scientific

establishment of Oncolysis, LLC, which is

abilities with expanding faculty, and look

housed at the Business Incubator and is

forward to another even more productive

developing cancer therapeutic agents with

year ahead.

the University of Missouri as a partner. The
patent that has resulted from the division
laboratory research is still in negotiations
between Paul Hippenmeyer representing
the University and a pharmaceutical
company, but has the potential of earning
$800,000,000 yearly for the length of
the patent, of which the University will
receive approximately four percent.
These earnings would be after an initial
investment of $10,000,000 is made for
phase I clinical trials. Research out of
Dr. Hoffman’s laboratory was awarded
1st Place at the 2011 National Society of
Nuclear Medicine (SNM) Annual Meeting
for Technologist Student Presentations.
Our division recruited two advanced
practice nurses (APNs) and a manager of
the clinical trials office in 2011. We also
continue to do very well in recruiting high
quality fellows to our fellowship program.
The division has invested an enormous
effort into chemotherapy computer
physician order entry (CPOE) and to date
more than 300 power plans have been
written by division members (largely Eris
Zagar, APN) and have been implemented

Carl Freter, MD, PhD
Director, Division of Hematology/
Medical Oncology