Corey Casper, Co-Director, UCI/Hutchinson Center Cancer Alliance

Breaking the link between cancer and infectious diseases

Early in his career as a physician-researcher, Dr. Corey Casper developed a staggering vision. He knew that more than 20 percent of cancer cases are triggered by infectious disease. And he believed that, in a relatively short amount of time, the majority of these cancers could be prevented by vaccines or medications aimed against the infectious pathogen, and strategies targeting the infectious cause of cancer could yield less toxic, more effective, and cost-effective therapies for persons who had already developed an infection-associated cancer. But he needed to find a place to study and pilot these strategies efficiently and with maximal impact.

So Casper took a groundbreaking trip to Uganda, a country that is home to one of the world’s highest concentrations of infection-related cancers. One of his first stops was the country’s sole and sparsely equipped cancer clinic, where a grim reality confronted him.
 
Many of the patients were children, and most of their cancers had already reached advanced stages, leaving little hope. Additionally, six of every 10 cancer cases were caused by an infectious disease. “It was a terrible tragedy,” Casper said. “But it was one I knew we could fix though a close partnership without our Ugandan colleagues focusing on research, capacity-building, and innovative clinical care.”

The lack of quality health care in developing countries has allowed infection-related cancers such as Burkitt lymphoma and Kaposi sarcoma to run rampant. In fact, cancer cases in the developing world outnumber cases of HIV, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

Since 2008, Casper and his Hutchinson Center colleagues have been working to defeat this growing epidemic through a unique collaboration with the Uganda Cancer Institute. This initiative, called the UCI/Hutchinson Center Cancer Alliance, is in the process of building a state-of-the-art treatment and research facility in Uganda’s capital, Kampala.

By treating and studying patients on cancer’s frontier, Casper believes we can accelerate progress against infection-related cancers worldwide. It’s all part of his vision of eradicating infection-related cancers and improving the lives of millions of people in the United States and around the world.

“A lot of cancer research focuses on incremental steps towards solutions that might not materialize for decades,” Casper said. “But we already know how to prevent some infection-related cancers and we can potentially wipe out the others. It’s an incredible opportunity to significantly reduce the cancer burden worldwide.”