In a celebration of excellence, one of University of Iowa Health Care’s (UIHC) own hematologist-oncologist embodies the ideals of patient care and groundbreaking research by leading his team to secure a prestigious award.
Clinical Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine Christopher Strouse, MD, received the 2023 Donald D. Dorfman Award for lymphoma research in the amount of $25,000 for his authorship of Long-Term Health-Related Quality of Life of Autologous Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation Patients and Nontransplant Patients With Aggressive Lymphoma: A Prospective Cohort Analysis.
Strouse and his team published the paper in July of 2022, after which it was carefully reviewed by the Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center (HCCC) and selected to receive the grant. The team’s process presented many challenges, but it also allowed them to draw on each other’s clinical strengths.
“Writing a paper like this is necessarily a highly collaborative process, because we have to draw on so many different contributors’ expertise. For this paper, I had to rely on the clinical expertise of other lymphoma docs to really put the results into the context of patients’ overall journey with lymphoma,” Strouse said.
As a specialist in Stem Cell and Cellular Therapy Transplant (SCT), Strouse’s work in lymphoma and leukemia research helps to illuminate complex and tragic diseases. With this award, he and his team will have an opportunity to continue their research, hoping to make improvements to the quality of life and treatment options of cancer patients. The team’s comprehensive study, as the source of their award-winning paper, compared the quality of life of three- and six-year post-diagnosis patients with aggressive lymphoma who were treated with autologous hematopoietic cell transplant (autoHCT) against those without transplant. With similar quality of life reported between groups, providers have a better idea of how this therapy may affect future participants.
“I believe that we as oncologists should have two primary goals in our practice: to prolong patients’ lives to the extent that it is possible and in line with their wishes, and to make sure they have the best possible quality of life as well,” Strouse commented.
He explained that these goals are often congruent – the most effective treatments to control a patient’s cancer also end up providing the best quality of life, because the disease itself has such a profound impact.
“Sometimes these goals come into conflict, and so we need research focused on the quality of life effects of our treatments to help guide our treatment recommendations. Treatment with high dose chemotherapy, with autologous stem cell rescue (or autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation) causes a well-recognized and described decrease in the quality of life while patients are going through the transplant process, and also is effective at keeping certain cancers like lymphomas in remission for much longer than if we didn’t use the transplant treatments. However, not much was known about whether this decrease in quality of life persists for the rest of patients’ lives, or whether patients’ quality of life recovers. This was the basic issue we were trying to resolve with this research project,” Strouse said.
A plaque will be presented to Strouse and his team by members of the Dorfman family at a recognition event later this year, followed by a presentation of the research and its impact on the future of the field.