Stanley S. Scott Cancer Center

(Approved by the Board of Regents, 1991)

Augusto Ochoa, MD, Director

The Louisiana Board of Regents approved the formation of the Stanley S. Scott Cancer Center (SSSCC) in 1991. The Center is a multidisciplinary matrix organization, drawing membership and expertise from every school within the LSU Health Sciences Center and other affiliated institutions throughout Louisiana. The Center is part of the Louisiana Cancer Research Center, which also includes the Cancer Center at Tulane University Health Sciences Center, Xavier University, and the Ochsner Medical Center.

The Stanley Scott Cancer Center has as its mission, “decreasing cancer incidence and mortality in the state of Louisiana with particular emphasis on those citizens in the greatest need, the medically underserved and minority population”. The Stanley S. Scott Cancer Center of LSU Health New Orleans created the Department of Interdisciplinary Oncology (DIO) with the goal of recruiting highly qualified, funded cancer investigators in a variety of cancer-related disciplines. This effort focuses on the promotion and creation of specialized research teams and will draw funded faculty/investigators from a broad variety of disciplines and clinical translational specialties who are focused on cancer research. These will bring research findings from the laboratory to the clinic and enhance patient care.  The Center also supports patient care through state-of-the-art clinical trials, and engages the community through various community-based participatory research projects. Our various funded programs and individual grants held by our faculty offer formal educational opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, medical students, residents, fellows and other health care professionals. MD/PhD and PhD students are mentored by our faculty as part of their formal training. In addition, we offer mentored training in cancer research to residents and fellows from various surgical and medical disciplines. Our NIH-funded Short-term Experiences in Cancer Research is conducted annually during the summer months and offers a 2-month training in cancer research to undergraduate students and medical students.

The SSSCC continues to enhance continuing education and foster collaboration, these efforts are reflected in the expansion of training grants.  These include:

Guest Speakers Series program invites both domestic and international scientific and clinical leaders to present their work and interact with SSSCC researchers to exchange scientific knowledge and establish collaborations.  Many of these internationally recognized speakers are now part of our External Advisory Committees (EACs) for the major grants. Currently, SSSCC faculty members hold over $20 million in annual funding for their research projects.

The SSSCC has been developed over the years using the programmatic requirements of the NCI Designated Cancer Center.  The NCI requires three fully developed research programs including Basic Science (Cancer Biology), Population Sciences and Clinical and Translational Research, which are built around areas of strength among faculty and researchers.  Support to researchers is provided in many forms, including several core facilities, such as Genomics, Proteomics, Immunology, Imaging, tissue biorepository and Biostatistics/Bioinformatics. In addition, faculty benefit from a dedicated clinical trials office and a grants and development office that assists with strategic development of proposals as well as with the application processing and award management. The Center is actively enhancing its translational and clinical research programs to complement its strong basic science component.

Through our award-winning Gulf South Clinical Trials Network (Gulf South CTN), physicians and investigators at the SSSCC, in collaboration with physicians at Feist Weiller Cancer Center, Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center and Ochsner Cancer Center, have established the Gulf South CTN to offer NCI supported clinical trials to patients in Louisiana. Through 49 different clinic locations in the state, patients have access to national cancer prevention/control and treatment trials. Since its inception in 2019, the Gulf South CTN team has continued to lead the state in the number of patients enrolled in clinical trials and clinical studies.  As of April 30, 2022, we have 1,223 patients registered to clinical trials.  The National Cancer Institute renewed this program in 2019 for $13.7 M over the next six years.  We plan to expand the reach of this program through partnerships with community organizations, such as the Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC).  The SSSCC also continues to expand pharmaceutical trials.  Many of the new drugs discovered by investigators in academic research facilities are fully developed in collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry that provides access to larger quantities of purified novel drugs that can be tested in clinical trials.  Having a strong partnership with the pharmaceutical industry, both in research and clinical testing, is also an important characteristic of a strong NCI Designated Cancer Center. New partnerships with the Community Outreach Program with Xavier University to increase the participation of women in the breast cancer screening program TMIST and with Our Lady of the Lake to open research base trials which will be available to all of its patients. 

The AIDS Malignancy Consortium (AMC) was founded to support innovative trials for AIDS-associated malignancies. In 2012, through an AARA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) supplement, the SSSCC clinical trials program (MBCCOP) applied for and obtained membership into the NCI-funded AIDS Malignancy Consortium (AMC), a research base for prevention and treatment trials for HIV/AIDS and related co- morbidities. Similarity, our HIV biorepository became a developing site within the NCI-funded AIDS and Cancer Specimen Resource (ACSR). This is highly significant given the fact that New Orleans and Baton Rouge are the second and third cities in the United States with the highest incidence of HIV infection, which affects primarily minority and underserved populations. These patients are more susceptible to virus related malignancies such as HPV-related cervical, head and neck cancer, Hepatitis B-related liver cancer, lymphomas, and Kaposi’s sarcoma. The program has created unique clinical capacity and a large biorepository of samples available for research. In addition, the program has developed a website to provide information to clinical providers, navigators and patients.

The Center for Translational Viral Oncology (CTVO) is a program project (CoBRE mechanism) funded by the NIH to strengthen biomedical research infrastructure at LSUHSC and to support a group of junior principal investigators (JPIs) focused on virus-associated cancers. In its second phase, this will be accomplished through an HIV-associated malignancy thematic multi-disciplinary approach directed at addressing the high incidence of regional HIV infection and associated cancer susceptibility. The CTVO supports the scientific and career development of JPIs who have a strong clinical translational interest focused on basic research and offer new directions for virus-associated cancer therapies and prevention. The CVTO has four major components.

1. Mentoring teams comprised of both basic science focused NIH-funded and internationally recognized scientists and clinicians in the areas of virology and oncology. These teams interactively guide JPIs in the development, implementation and interpretation of cutting edge projects dedicated to understanding the mechanistic role of viruses in cancer.

2. Use of clinical material from a high-risk patient population - JPIs have access to a unique set of clinical data and biospecimens collected from cancer patients from multiple hospitals in the region. Resources, such as the NCORP clinical trails network and the Louisiana Tumor Registry, provide specimens and cancer public health information essential for effective research planning and implementation.

3. Integration of the CTVO within existing research and clinical infrastructure at LSU Health includes support for five state-of-the-art research core facilities serving the CVTO and other research endeavors in the state of Louisiana. These include The Translational Genomics Core (TGC), The Cellular Immunology and Metabolism Core (CIMC), The HIV Cell and Tumor Biorepository (HCTB), the Bioinformatics and Biostatistics Core (BBC), and the Molecular Histopathology and Analytical Microscopy (MHAM) resources. In phase 2, the CTVO program brings together four major research projects, and will fund at least 4 pilot projects led by JPIs, and guided by their co-mentoring teams. These projects focus on well-established oncogenic viruses which are either etiologic agents or associated with malignances of primary interest to patients in Louisiana, including Kaposi sarcoma (KSHV), lymphoma (KSHV and EBV), anogenital, head and neck, and cervical cancer (HPV), hepatocellular carcinoma (HCV), colon cancer (CMV), and brain tumors (JCV). These programs leverage strengths of the leading academic health centers in Greater New Orleans: LSU Health, Tulane Medical Center, and Ochsner Medical Center, as well as the Louisiana Cancer Research Center (LCRC), which is home to collaborative research for these three institutions. Most importantly, CTVO research is directly relevant to the patient population in Louisiana who are, in many cases, persons of African American descent that are disproportionately impacted by the HIV epidemic and/or experience other significant and relevant cancer/infectious disease health disparities.

4. The CTVO provides a conduit for JPI and mentor networking and connection to cancer and infectious disease research expertise within the LSUHSC-NO programs, within the larger LSU Health system, with regional partners, and with national and international experts. CTVO achieves this through sponsoring an external advisory board that reviews the CTVO Research Project and Core performance annually. In addition, the CTVO intends to sponsor/co-sponsor a viral oncology symposium annually in Phase 2 with invited speakers from throughout the network of regional stakeholders and from national experts in viral oncology. JPIs will be encouraged to invite prominent members of their field to visit LSU and potentially collaborate with us.

The laboratory of Drs. John West and Charles Wood focuses on human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and human herpesvirus, and the roles these viruses play in immunosuppression and cancer development. One of the ongoing projects is to study the subtype C strain HIV, the most prevalent HIV strain in people living with HIV worldwide, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. In the current era of anti-retroviral therapy, people living with HIV are living a normal lifespan but there is still a need to better understand where the HIV reservoirs are and develop means to eliminate them to achieve a cure. Thus, an ongoing study in collaboration with colleagues in Zambia, a sub-Saharan country in Africa has been studying autopsy cases of HIV infected individuals to understand where HIV reservoirs are in treated and viral suppressed individuals, to try to understand its disease pathogenesis, the potential co-factors involved, and the potential tissue viral reservoirs in individuals treated with anti-viral regimens. Furthermore, chronic HIV infection and inflammation have led to the development of a number of non-AIDS associated diseases, including neurological diseases and cancers. Studies are now ongoing to understand how HIV infection, co-infections by other viruses as well as other co-factors may affect HIV disease and identify biomarkers for disease progression.  One of such viruses is the Human Herpesvirus 8 (HHV-8) or the Kaposi’s Sarcoma Herpesvirus (KSHV) which is a virus linked to Kaposi’s Sarcoma (KS), a cancer often found in AIDS patients. One of laboratory’s largest ongoing collaborative research projects - which has been ongoing for the past 26 years - involves multiple U.S. research institutions and the University of Zambia, School of Medicine to study HIV/AIDS, and KSHV transmission, disease pathogenesis, treatment, and prevention. More recently the study on HIV and KS has been expanded to the Ocean Road Cancer Institute in Tanzania. The team has built research laboratories and research teams in these two African countries to conduct HIV and related malignancies research. Our goal is to understand how these viruses regulate gene expression, replicate, transmit, cause diseases, and the tumor environment that enable the development and growth of the tumor, including genomics and the tumor immune environment. These will lead to knowledge that can help in the development of strategies to prevent infection and disease development, including HIV associated cancers.

To obtain more information about clinical and research information or opportunities contact Dr. Augusto Ochoa, Director, LSUHSC Stanley S. Scott Cancer Center, at aochoa@lsuhsc.edu,  504-210-2828 or visit our website at the LSUHSC School of Medicine under Departments and Centers.