TWiPO #10 ~ Interview with Dr Robert Seeger - a podcast by Solving Kids Cancer

July
07, 2011

"This Week in Pediatric Oncology"
podcast host Dr. Tim Cripe interviewed Dr. Robert Seeger from CHLA (Children's
Hospital of Los Angeles) about his contributions to improvements in treating
neuroblastoma as well as his vision for future advances.

Dr. Seeger's career has been remarkable in that
he began with an interest in immunotherapy and neuroblastoma as an intriguing
model for this approach, and has consequently been involved in every major
advance in treating neuroblastoma, including the pivotal 1984 discovery of
the first-everamplification of an oncogene for any cancer – MYCN
and the 1985 demonstration that MCYN could be used to predict survival.
Authoring over 180 publications, Dr. Seeger has made a significant contribution
to every step toward developing better therapies for neuroblastoma, including
induction therapy, myeloablative therapy, immunotherapy with anti-GD2 antibody
and cytokines, maintenance therapy with retinoids, and most recently, work in
tumor microenvironment and developing reproducible biomarkers for detecting minimal
residual disease. At the beginning of Dr. Seeger’s career, survival for
high-risk neuroblastoma was abysmal at about 5%, and now survival is about 45%.
Dr Seeger has been a leader in the NANT consortium (New Approaches to Neuroblastoma
Therapy) and involved in planning the early phase
clinical trials conducted by this 15-member consortium.

When questioned about current challenges in his
research, Dr. Seeger mentioned the increased regulatory burdens associated with
developing new treatments, and also discussed the need for preclinical (mouse)
models that are predictive and well-validated. Dr Seeger believes that
improvements can be made in functional imaging, including developing
pharmacodynamic markers to detect impact of therapy on tumor.

Dr. Seeger is Professor and Division Head for
Basic and Translational Research at Children's Center for Cancer and Blood
Diseases, Children's Hospital Los Angeles/USC School of Medicine in Los
Angeles, CA. His research interests are neuroblastoma risk assessment by gene
expression profiling at diagnosis; evaluating response to treatment by
quantifying rare neuroblastoma cells in blood and bone marrow; immunotherapy of
neuroblastoma (natural killer cells, anti-tumor antibodies, tumor associated
macrophages). Dr. Seeger is a reviewer for several high-impact oncology
journals, and is a member of the COG NB steering committee. He earned his MD at
Oregon Health Sciences University School of Medicine in Portland and completed
pediatric internship and residency at the University of Minnesota Medical
School in Minneapolis. Additionally, Dr. Seeger obtained research fellowship
training at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the ICRF Tumor Immunology
Unit at University College London, UK.

Please email questions or comments to
twipo@solvingkidscancer.org

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