Deaths from cancer are declining, thanks to research

Deaths from cancer are declining — the American Association for Cancer Research reports a 32 percent reduction in the U.S. cancer death rate between 1991 and 2019. This equates to nearly 3.5 million cancer deaths avoided in that time frame.

What’s driving this progress? A big factor is medical research. Studies have led to improvements in treatments, diagnostics and screening, leading to earlier cancer detection and a longer, better quality of life after diagnosis.

MultiCare Health System has played a role in oncology advances since 1983, when the organization first began participating in research.

“We started out as a small research program, with one office, focused on cancer trials for adults,” says Karyn Pendleton Hart, CCRP, who helped foster MultiCare’s research program from its infancy. “Now we’ve become an institute, studying everything from asthma to kidney disease. It’s been really nice to watch our research efforts grow.”

Building a mountain of knowledge

What does it take to launch and sustain a successful research program? One key ingredient is a savvy research coordinator, like Hart.

Hart joined MultiCare in 1984, just a year after the organization was approved as a Community Clinical Oncology Program (CCOP) site. Funded by the National Cancer Institute, CCOP was designed to improve access to clinical trials.

“CCOP program sites like ours made it possible for patients to participate in national cancer clinical trials in their own community, without having to travel long distances to a university hospital,” Hart says. “At the time, we were enrolling about 40 adults in trials for breast cancer and leukemia. But each year we kept growing and growing, applying for more and more grants, and partnering with more institutions.”

Throughout her career, Hart has served as a mentor for Lisa Strasbaugh, who was involved in oncology research in the Puyallup community for several years before joining MultiCare Good Samaritan Hospital in 1994.

“Karyn has taught me everything that I know about being a research coordinator,” Strasbaugh says. “She showed me how to be the best that I could be for patients, how to manage data, how to keep myself organized, among so many other things. Nobody starts out with a mountain of knowledge — you have to build it. Karyn not only helped me do that — she helped MultiCare do that, too.”

Driving change in oncology, building a research institute

Together, Hart and Strasbaugh have witnessed many changes in oncology as new treatments emerged, some of which became the standard of care.

In 1992, the CCOP network, including MultiCare’s site, was used for the first time to conduct a large national prevention trial. The trial evaluated the effectiveness of a drug called tamoxifen in preventing breast cancer in women who were at an increased risk for developing the disease.

“The women who participated in that trial were so excited and it was always fun to see them at their visits — I got to hear all about their lives,” Hart says. “And tamoxifen did turn out to be effective. Women taking this drug reduced their risk of developing breast cancer by almost half.”

Another national breast cancer trial conducted at MultiCare and other CCOP sites in the mid-90s tested a drug called trastuzumab, also known as Herceptin, in patients who had HER2 positive breast cancers. These cancers have a high level of protein known as HER2 and tend to spread quickly.

“This drug not only became the standard of care but also helped pave the way for more HER2 positive medications to follow — combined, they changed the face of cancer care for women with this type of disease,” Strasbaugh says.

Over the years, MultiCare has conducted trials testing new treatments, diagnostics and prevention strategies in a wide variety of cancers, including prostate cancer, lung cancer, colorectal cancer and more. The organization went from conducting National Cancer Institute studies only to participating in pharmaceutical research for all stages of cancer.

“Watching this growth over the past 40 years has been like seeing a car transform into a jet. MultiCare has really proven itself to be a premier research site, and that’s thanks to many people.”

“When Karyn and I were first doing this work, there would be one standard of care for years and years, and now there’s movement across all kinds of cancers and those standards are constantly changing,” Strasbaugh says. “New treatments that target a cancer’s specific genes and proteins are at the forefront right now and that’s all because of research.”

In 2010, the MultiCare Institute for Research & Innovation was borne to house all of MultiCare’s research efforts — which today focus on many diseases in addition to cancer — within a single program. The Institute is now the largest community-based nonacademic research center in the Pacific Northwest, offering research opportunities for children and adults across the state of Washington.

“Watching this growth over the past 40 years has been like seeing a car transform into a jet,” Strasbaugh says. “MultiCare has really proven itself to be a premier research site, and that’s thanks to many people. We have a lot of physician engagement and we have fostered relationships with an ever-growing list of community partners.”

Beyond the standard of care

Just as MultiCare’s research program has evolved over the years, so too have the professional paths for Hart and Strasbaugh. Today, Hart works as a pediatric research coordinator at Mary Bridge Children’s, while Strasbaugh, a clinical operations administrative coordinator, focuses on recruitment and screening for cancer clinical trials.

Yet what hasn’t changed is their passion for research. There are two things that keep Hart and Strasbaugh excited about what they do. The first is the boundless opportunity for learning and discovery.

“There is always something new to tackle, both in oncology and in research in general,” Hart says. “For example, when COVID hit a few years ago, we suddenly needed to shift our focus and start working on COVID trials. No one knew anything about COVID-19 at first, and then within a few years we were testing drugs that came to fruition as effective treatments. It’s things like that that keep me going.”

Another source of inspiration? The patients themselves.

“When I find a patient that is potentially eligible for a trial, it’s exciting,” Strasbaugh says. “Because I know we can offer them something more than the standard of care. It’s really a privilege to be a part of that.”