Skin cancer experts join Nevada team

By Marshall Allen

Monday, June 25, 2007 | 7:17 a.m.

Nevada Cancer Institute, in a quest to land top-drawer oncologists, has landed two skin cancer experts to form the core of its new melanoma research team.

Building an expertise in melanoma is a goal of the institute because of Nevada's place in the sun and the number of people who work outdoors.

Skin cancers are the sixth most prevalent form of cancer in Nevada, occurring at a rate of 22.3 men and 16.1 women out of 100,000. It's deadly if not detected early.

The institute has hired researcher Sheri Holmen , of the Van Andel Research Institute in Michigan, and Dr. Wolfram Samlowski, an oncologist with the University of Utah.

Holmen is the recipient of the Nevada Cancer Institute's first grant from the National Institutes of Health, paying $758,000 over the next four years.

Sandy Murdock, president and chief operating officer of Nevada Cancer Institute, said the NIH grant elevates the organization's profile nationally by showing "we have the infrastructure and the scientists and the research equipment" to support high-caliber research .

Holmen has a personal interest in fighting cancer - her mother has had breast, lung and skin cancer and fought the diseases for about 15 years. The researcher is focused on identifying proteins required for the survival of skin cancer cells, which can be targeted with drugs to cut off the cancer at its source. She's hoping to develop a "cocktail" of three or four inhibitors to attack cancer cells, similar to the drug combinations used to battle the human immunodeficiency virus , which causes AIDS.

Nevada Cancer Institute was an appealing destination because it's geared toward doing Phase I and II clinical trials, the stages when drugs are first tested on people to see whether they're safe and effective. The institute has opened 50 trials since it started, whereas Holmen's former employer had one active trial.

"It is extremely important we get results of our research to the patients to have better treatment for them," Holmen said.

Samlowski has been interested in melanoma for 20 years and will begin seeing patients in mid-July.

Skin cancer is most common in people in their 30s or 40s and is particularly deadly when it spreads to vital organs, Samlowski said. Progress has been slow in improving outcomes for advanced cases, he said, so the goal is to find new treatments to improve the survival rate.

"I'm driven by the patients and their families," Samlow-ski said. "These are relatively young people at the prime of their life."

Samlowski said working with a private institution has several advantages over a university setting. At the University of Utah it might take six months to launch a promising drug study, whereas it will take about six weeks at Nevada Cancer Institute, he said.

"The emphasis of Nevada Cancer Institute is to develop new cancer treatments and bring them to the patients quickly," he said.

Since it opened in September 2005, the Nevada Cancer Institute staff has grown to 28 researchers and clinicians. The goal is to increase the number to 80 by the time the institute is five years old.