Sigrid (left) and Ayyappan Rajasekaran will lead the new childhood cancer research center, Ayyappan as its director and Sigrid as head of a research lab. The News Journal/ROBERT CRAIG

UCLA researchers are tapped to lead new Nemours Center for Childhood Cancer Research

By GARY HABER, The News Journal

Posted Tuesday, August 14, 2007

A new pediatric cancer research program at Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children will not only work to discover life-saving treatments, but also is expected to raise the national profile of Delaware's only hospital for kids.

The Nemours Center for Childhood Cancer Research represents a $4 million investment in laboratories, equipment and salaries by the Nemours Foundation, which owns and operates the duPont Hospital in Rockland and pediatric hospitals in Jacksonville, Orlando and Pensacola, Fla.

After a nationwide search, Nemours officials lured Ayyappan and Sigrid Rajasekaran, a husband-and-wife team of nationally known cancer researchers, away from the University of California, Los Angeles, to be among the center's first researchers.

Ayyappan Rajasekaran, 47, will serve as the center's director. Sigrid Rajasekaran, 39, will head its cell therapies research laboratory.

"We cast our net wide and we got the best of the best, which is also a coup for Delaware," said Vicky Funanage, Nemours' director of biomedical research.

Currently, there are five researchers at the center, including the Rajasekarans. That number is expected to grow to 50 researchers in the next three to four years, said Ayyappan Rajasekaran, who will oversee cancer research at Nemours' four hospitals and continue to do research.

The center's research will focus on understanding the mechanism of cancer, which is generally the same for children and adults, and developing potential treatments for the most common cancers in children -- brain tumors, leukemia and lymphoma.

The new center, which has been in the planning stage for two years, will for the first time tie together pediatric cancer research done across the Nemours system. It also will provide "a critical mass of researchers dedicated to childhood cancer," Funanage said.

Top tier of research funding

Children's hospitals, like universities, are judged in part on the quality of their research and the extent to which they attract grants from prestigious organizations such as the National Institutes of Health. The new center at A.I. duPont is expected to burnish the hospital's reputation as it competes for patients in northern Delaware with Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and in southern Delaware with John Hopkins' Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore.

Funanage said the Rajasekarans' reputation will help A.I. duPont attract other researchers with NIH grants, which will help the hospital reach its goal of vaulting from 16th in children's hospitals in NIH funding to the top 10.

That would catapult A.I. duPont, which treats between 60 and 70 new cases of cancer a year among patients from Delaware and surrounding states, into the same tier as its two major rivals.

A.I. duPont researchers had $2.3 million in NIH grants in 2006, compared with $79.6 million for researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and $17.5 million at Kennedy Krieger.

A robust research program is important not only because it can raise a hospital's reputation but also because patients and doctors are attracted to a place that is doing cutting-edge medicine, Funanage said.

Cutting cancer cases

Expanding research into childhood cancer also is important to Delaware.

Delaware's pediatric cancer rate is slightly higher than the national average -- about 19.1 cases per 100,000 children compared with 16.4 nationally -- for the years 2000 to 2004, according to the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services.

That difference may be explained by the state's small number of cases and the fact that Delaware does a more complete job of tracking them than some other states, said Dr. Christopher Frantz, chief of pediatric hemotology/oncology at A.I. duPont. In 2004, there were 44 new cases of pediatric cancer reported; in 2005, that number fell to 35, based on preliminary calculations.

Still, the Rajasekarans expect to play a role in reducing the number of cases even further.

The couple are researching whether the presence of increased sodium levels in cancerous cells could lead to a test for identifying cancer. They also are researching the connection between obesity and childhood cancers, such as whether obese children are more likely to develop cancer earlier or develop more virulent forms of cancer.

Ayyappan Rajasekaran said he's been impressed with the interest from Nemours physicians in being a part of the new cancer program. A June gala raised $260,000, and the Caitlin Robb Foundation, which funds pediatric cancer research, gave the center a $50,000 grant.

"That's been a very big plus," he said. "What struck me was the enthusiasm and support. They really want to do it, and that's a great thing to have."

The new Nemours pediatric cancer center will be part of the Delaware Center for Translational Cancer Research, a statewide group of researchers at Christiana Care's Helen F. Graham Cancer Center, the University of Delaware and the Delaware Biotechnology Institute working to bring cancer research from the laboratory to the patient's bedside.

Dr. Nicholas Petrelli, who is the Graham cancer center's director, said Nemours' inclusion will be important in working to ensure Delaware's overall cancer death rate continues to drop.

"Anytime you put together high-quality researchers with high-quality clinicians, you deliver better care," Petrelli said.

That's a challenge Ayyappan Rajasekaran is ready to accept.

"I think we'll make a big change in childhood cancer research in Delaware," he said.

Contact Gary Haber at 324-2878 or ghaber@delawareonline.com.

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