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MUSC Medical Links Charleston Links Archives Catalyst Advertisers Seminars and Events Research Studies Public Relations Research Grants MUSC home page Community Happenings Campus News Applause

 


HCC's endowed chair to help recruit top cellular therapy researcher

MUSC's Hollings Cancer Center (HCC) has established the Robert Stuart, M.D., Distinguished Endowed Chair in Hematology/Oncology. The chair will reside in Hollings’ Center of Economic Excellence (CoEE) for Cancer Stem Cell Biology & Therapy.
 
The focus of CoEE’s research is dual. It will identify ways to use the body’s cancer stem cells found in bone marrow or adult organs as treatment targets for cancer therapy; and it will develop and market the bioengineering aspects of cancer stem cell collection and utilization for clinical applications.
 
HCC is one of only a few cancer centers in the United States—and the only center in South Carolina—with a “clean cell” laboratory. This allows a cancer patient’s healthy immune cells to be taken from their body, grown in the lab, and then infused into the patient’s blood to prompt the immune system to fight the cancer. 
 
“Looking for clues to how cancer behaves through the prism of cancer stem cells is a frontier in research, and I am excited to be a part of it,” said Stuart. “It’s a huge honor to have an endowed chair in my name.”

Establishing the chair
The Stuart chair was established with a gift from William H. Barnwell II, M.D., a patient of Stuart’s who died in early 2009 of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), and his wife, Virginia Sands Barnwell.
 
“During my husband’s 20 months of treatment, he found the care he received from Dr. Stuart and the entire department to be exceptional. He trusted his medical team professionally and personally,” Barnwell said. “My family—Billy and Beth Barnwell, John Barnwell, and Ginny and Tom Murphy—and I greatly appreciate the efforts of all the doctors and caregivers at Hollings Cancer Center. We are pleased to be a part of my husband’s wish to make this gift in honor of Dr. Stuart and the compassion he shows his patients.”
 
Barnwell also expressed gratitude to MUSC’s Donald Fox, M.D., who discovered Barnwell’s cancer through a routine physical.


Friday, June 11, 2010


The Catalyst Online is published weekly by the MUSC Office of Public Relations for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of South Carolina. The Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at 792-4107 or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to The Catalyst Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call Island Publications at 849-1778, ext. 201.