Thoracic Oncology Program Launches Kratz Lab Focused on Therapeutic Interventions for Early-Stage Lung Cancers
The Thoracic Oncology Program proudly announces the launch of the Kratz Lab, which will focus on understanding the genetic and immunological mechanisms that drive early-stage, surgically resectable thoracic malignancies, most notably non-small cell lung cancer. The translationally-focused Kratz Lab will use the knowledge gained from investigating these mechanisms to identify novel therapeutic targets and treatments for this group of patients.
Johannes R. Kratz, M.D., assistant professor in the Division of Adult Cardiothoracic Surgery and Van Auken Endowed Chair in Thoracic Oncology, is the lab's principal investigator. He is also director of advanced minimally invasive thoracic surgery.
Among the roster of collaborators is David M. Jablons, M.D., renowned lung cancer surgeon, and director of the Thoracic Oncology Program and Thoracic Oncology Lab. Together with Michael Mann, M.D., the trio developed a prognostic assay for early-stage lung cancer, now in widespread clinical use, that identifies patients across a risk continuum. That work has been continued by Gavitt Woodard, M.D., a general surgery research resident in the Thoracic Oncology Lab, who played a key role in devising a prospective study that provided further evidence of the utility of the assay. The thoracic oncology tissue bank, started by Dr. Jablons in the mid-1990s when lung cancer was a distant outpost for research, now one of the largest and most comprehensive in U.S., undergirds the research.
The prognostic assay informs treatment decisions after surgery. Patients likely to see their cancer recur (high risk) receive targeted interventions while those at low risk avoid more toxic therapies. Much like Oncotype DX, the revolutionary genomic test for cancer staging, the assay developed by Jablons, Kratz and Mann was a breakthrough in lung cancer, supplanting conventional methods of staging based on tumor histology, size, and nodal status with a far more precise moleculary-driven prognostic testing modality.
The Kratz Lab is, in effect, standing of the shoulders of the prior research. Using state-of-the-art precision medicine technology, the lab will develop novel targeted therapies for these early-stage lung cancer patients, a group at high risk for recurrence despite having had what appeared to be curative surgery. Adding such therapies to the treatment armanentarium could one day boost overall 5-year survival from 45-50% to 75-90%, a number in line with other solid tumor cancers such as those of the colon and breast.