Illinois Medicine

Beyond Chemo UI Hospital first to T prescribe new brain tumor treatment HE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS HOSPITAL & Health Sciences System last fall became the first medical center in North America to pre- scribe a newly FDA-approved treatment for patients with glioblastoma multiforme—the most common and fastest spreading type of brain tumor. UI Hospital became one of the first in the U.S. to be trained and certified to treat patients with recurrent tumors with Tumor Treating Fields, a new noninvasive therapy. It uses a portable device, the NovoTTF-100A System made by Novocure, which deploys alternating electrical fields that prevent cancer cells from dividing as rapidly. David Messmer, 50, of Indiana, diag- nosed in November 2010, became the first patient in the U.S. to receive a prescription for the Novocure device out- side of a clinical trial. He began treatment in November 2011 at the UI Hospital in Chicago after his tumor continued to progress despite two surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation. With the support of his family, he was "willing to try anything," Messmer said at the time. "Chemo is just not working for me. This is my next best hope." The NovoTTF, which has been demonstrated to effectively inhibit tumor growth by inducing cell death, provides physicians with a fourth treatment option for cancer in addition to surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy. The portable, noninvasive medical device, designed for continuous use throughout the day by the patient, is placed directly on the skin near the tumor. Compared with patients treated with chemo- therapy, those who participated in the clinical trial for the device had similar median overall survival times, fewer side effects and better quality-of-life scores, said Herbert Engelhard, MD, chief of UI Neuro-oncology at UI Hospital, one of the primary research sites for the clinical trial. "We are proud to work with Novocure to make this state-of-the-art therapy available to those GBM patients who need it," he said. Among the approximately 10,000 Americans each year afflicted with glioblastoma multiforme, median survival time is 15 months from initial diagnosis with optimal treatment, and from the time of recurrence— without additional effective treatment—the median survival time is only three to five months. "Patients with recurrent GBM present a significant treatment chal- lenge," Engelhard says. M Head of Research Mitra Dutta appointed vice chancellor Mitra Dutta ITRA DUTTA, PHD, PROFESSOR and head of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago for more than a decade, has been named vice chancellor for research, where she will oversee $340 million in annual research expenditures. A longtime senior researcher and director with the U.S. Army Research Office laboratories, responsible for $310 million in grants to universities and other research offices, Dutta also served as adjunct professor at several nearby universities, including Rutgers, Maryland, North Carolina State and North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The recipient of a doctorate in physics from the University of Cincinnati, Dutta joined the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2001 to head the newly formed department of electrical and computer engineering, and since then she has been the principal or co-principal investigator on about 20 grants totaling more than $7.5 million. Dutta has authored about 300 journal publications and book chapters and co-authored or co-edited seven books, and she has 30 patents issued and several more in application status. She has won numerous professional honors, including the Society of Women Engineers' Achievement Award, for her pioneering research in the field of novel heterostructure optoelectronic devices and her characterization of compound semiconductor materials. ILLINOIS MEDICINE | 7 PHOTO: ROBERTA DUPUIS-DEVLIN

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