Dr. Greg Aune named to serve on cancer research advocates panel

Dr. Greg Aune of San Antonio, Texas, a Colfax High School graduate whose research work in Texas was recognized with a fund drive exercise at the high school here, has been nominated by the National Cancer Institute to be a new member to its Council of Research Advocates.

Aune is a pediatric hematologist-oncologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

The announcement was made Sept. 19 by NCI director Harold Varmus in a briefing on pediatric cancer at the White House.

Aune, who is also an assistant professor of pediatrics at the San Antonio Center, was appointed by the NCI in an effort to underscore the institution’s commitment to pursuing research and treatment for pediatric cancer, according to a report from the center. The NCI Council of Research Advocates is the only federal advisory committee of its kind.

Aune will be part of a two-year board membership which he believes will be helpful in aligning the interests of various childhood cancer advocacy groups with those of the NCI.

“I hope to encourage a meaningful dialogue regarding the future funding priorities for pediatric cancer,” he said. “I’d like to direct the obvious passion of these groups towards efforts that resonate with the NCI and move the field of pediatric cancer research forward.”

“This is a group consisting mostly of community advocates, but they really like the fact that Greg is both a cancer survivor and a cancer researcher,” said Dr. Gail Tomlinson, interim director of the Greehey Children’s Cancer Research Institute at the UT Health Science Center.

Aune as a teenager battled Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

“They are undoubtedly as impressed as we are by his passion for what he does,” Tomlinson added.

Aune is the son of John and Jane Aune of Colfax. He graduated with the Colfax High School class of 1993 and his studies were delayed during high school due to his battle with Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

He and his wife, Christine, now reside in San Antonio with their four children.

His research work at San Antonio was recognized here St. Baldrick’s Foundation fund drive in which pledges were made on condition that people shave their heads.

The Baldrick’s Foundation earlier this year made a $350,000 grant for research at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

Hyundai also gave gave $250,000 to Cardiac Disease Study in Childhood Cancer Survivors.

This year alone, the American Cancer Society estimates roughly 10,450 patients younger than 15 will be diagnosed with cancer.

Over 80 percent of children with cancer survive past five years.

Despite this being a significant improvement over the mid-1970s odds of 60 percent survival, much still needs to be researched to spare children and their families from the heavy ordeal of cancer.

Commonly-held assertions in the research community these days link heart disease with a poor diet and lifestyle.

Dr.

Aune’s goal is to help make life after cancer better.

His work utilizes laboratory mice to observe the effects of cancer treatments on the heart. An advantage to using mice in the study of late-onset cardiac complications is the ability to observe results in about 15 months, whereas in humans, it would necessitate a decades-long study.

One of his mouse models features cardiac damage from chemotherapy and is currently receiving dexrazoxane – the first and only FDA-approved drug indicated to protect against long-term damage to the heart. Last month, Dr.

Greg Aune shared his plans to extend the scope of his work to include actual patients.

He expects to enroll 30 participants according to a set of criteria to complete a health survey and a few non-invasive examinations.

The St. Baldrick’s grant is part of more than $24.7 million in new funding of pediatric cancer research grants announced recently by the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, a charity dedicated to funding children’s cancer research and the leading non-governmental provider of childhood cancer research grants.

The research center at San Antonio is one of the elite academic cancer centers in the country to be named a National Cancer Institute (NCI) Designated Cancer Center, and is one of only four in Texas.

As the survival rate of pediatric cancer continues to rise and more children with cancer are successfully treated, the average life expectancy and unintended consequences of childhood cancer therapies have not been fully researched. “A third of long-term survivors have a life-threatening medical problem related to the treatment that saved them,” Aune explained. “You save someone’s life at 15, but they’re dead by the time they’re 50? You have a problem there.”

Aune himself is an example of that: by the time he started his fellowship at UTHealth in pediatric hematology-oncology, the father of four was diagnosed with severe aortic stenosis and coronary artery disease.