Cancer Research & Patient Care Impact Update

Russell Pachynski, MD

In this cancer research update, we’re honored to introduce Russell Pachynski, MD, a Washington University medical oncologist at Barnes-Jewish Hospital who received early-stage funding through the competitive Siteman Investment Program (SIP) at Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine. Funding for this prestigious grant program is made possible by gifts to the Cancer Frontier Fund at the Foundation, along with other donor gifts throughout the year.

Manipulating the Immune System To Fight Cancer

Innovations in cancer research and treatment options are critical to advancing patient care. Gifts through The Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital ensure physician-scientists can continue transforming cancer health care. Dr. Pachynski was awarded a SIP grant in 2022 to explore the possibility of shrinking cancer tumors by altering the immune response. Dr. Pachynski’s lab focuses on the role of the immune system in developing and controlling cancer.

“Unfortunately, what we see in patients is that at some point the cancer mutates and grows to the point where it’s outstripping, outplaying, and outsmarting the immune system,” Dr. Pachynski says. “What we are trying to do is make the immune system more powerful and smarter than the cancer so that it can shrink back and control the cancer.”

Early findings from Pachynski’s team indicate that, by increasing the number of immune cells in prostate cancer, more immune cells will reach the tumor, resulting in tumor shrinkage. While their current study is related to prostate cancer, Dr. Pachynski believes other cancers, such as melanoma and breast cancer, will benefit from this immunotherapy as well.

Funding from SIP enabled Dr. Pachynski to design and produce a large number of antibody therapies to test in mice. If these studies are successful, they will form the basis for the first in-human trial in prostate cancer. In 2023, a patent was awarded, which will help accelerate this promising therapy toward the clinic more quickly.

“You never know what experiment you’re going to do where you find something new, and that becomes the next big blockbuster immunotherapy that could treat hundreds of thousands of patients,” Dr. Pachynski says.

Your Impact on Cancer Research and Patient Care

The ability, success, and rate at which scientific discoveries can progress from an early idea to patient care and treatment are determined by funding availability, and, in many cases, private philanthropic investment is catalytic in advancing vital research.

“Those funds have been critical in terms of supporting not just personnel in the lab but also reagents that we use to do these critical experiments and get us to the point where we can get additional funding from other sources,” Dr. Pachynski says.

Through the Siteman Investment Program, every $1 awarded is leveraged for an additional $12 in federal funding, which is critical to expand the scale of research and test promising innovations. Thanks to donor support and determined physician-scientists, the future of cancer research and patient care gets brighter every day. Over the last 15 years, generous donors supported more than 162 SIP projects.

Gifts through The Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital ensure physician-scientists can continue transforming health care.

Watch the Cancer Frontier Video Series and learn more about the Cancer Frontier Fund