Contact: Will Sansom
Phone: (210) 567-2579
E-mail: Sansom@uthscsa.edu

Dr. Curiel speaks about the future of SACI at a press conference held Monday.
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Tyler Curiel, M.D., M.P.H., hired in June by The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and the Cancer Therapy & Research Center to lead the institutions’ collaborative San Antonio Cancer Institute (SACI), said at a press conference Sept. 18 that as an academic cancer center, SACI is on “the short list of excellence among all cancer institutions in the U.S.” and has the commitment and resources to become even greater.

SACI will apply for a renewal of its Cancer Center Support Grant from the National Cancer Institute in October 2007, Dr. Curiel said. SACI currently is one of only two NCI Cancer Centers in Texas. The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center at Houston is the other.

Francisco G. Cigarroa, M.D., president of the Health Science Center; Karen K. Fields, M.D., president and chief executive officer of the Cancer Therapy & Research Center; and William L. Henrich, M.D., M.A.C.P., dean of the School of Medicine and vice president for medical affairs at the Health Science Center, praised Dr. Curiel, arguably the most important recruitment for San Antonio academic oncology since Dr. Fields arrived in January 2005. Dr. Curiel joined SACI from the Tulane University Medical School in New Orleans.

“Dr. Curiel’s leadership and scientific expertise is going to change the landscape of oncology in South Texas,” Dr. Cigarroa said. “His arrival reflects the commitment of both the Health Science Center and the CTRC to expand what we are doing in academic oncology to better serve our region, the state and the world. One result will be more clinical trials testing more new groundbreaking treatments for cancer.”

Dr. Fields said, “The NCI designation is truly distinctive and important for the region. Only those cancer centers doing innovative research combined with providing the best in clinical care hold this prestigious designation. A key component of our drive to remain an NCI Cancer Center is a seamless relationship between the CTRC and the Health Science Center. We have an energetic, articulate leader in Dr. Curiel who understands how to build a cancer center and who will utilize the tremendous resources already in place. We can’t say enough good things about his decision to join us in San Antonio. We are honored to have him here.”

Dr. Henrich praised Dr. Curiel’s willingness to challenge long-held paradigms about cancer through solid research. “Dr. Curiel’s work in helping us understand that cancers can actually turn our own immune systems against us is extraordinary,” Dr. Henrich said. “He will be a tremendous asset in our School of Medicine and in SACI.”

Dr. Curiel recently published a trio of widely cited papers in Nature Medicine, one of the highest impact scientific journals in the world. His findings were in experiments with ovarian cancer, but ultimately they may prove to be applicable to all cancers. “For the last 50 years, people have tried to develop immune therapies for cancer,” Dr. Curiel said. “The premise is that since the immune system won’t reject the cancer, we need to give the patient more killer immune cells. Fundamentally that doesn’t work. We have shown in mice and human clinical trials that cancer is reprogramming immune and other cells into bad actors that actually worsen the cancer. Our approach is to ask, ‘What if we take away those bad actors?’”

In late 2004 in Nature Medicine, Dr. Curiel and his team identified a very specific immune cell that cancer was using to turn off the immune system. It was the first definitive identification of this “off switch” in human cancer. That paper is now among the most cited in the scientific world.

(L-R) Dr. Cigarroa, Dr. Fields, Dr. Berggren and Dr. Curiel pose for a picture at a welcome reception held after the press conference.

Dr. Curiel said SACI’s progress will result in a richer clinical trials environment, an arena in which SACI will work closely with oncologists throughout San Antonio and South Texas to provide the latest treatments for all types of cancer. SACI’s current areas of focus are aging and cancer, experimental therapeutics, cancer prevention and population science, genomic integrity and tumor development, and genitourinary oncology.

“This is a new chapter,” Dr. Curiel said. “Part of my career plan was always to build a large clinical and research enterprise that would do great things for patients. I have pointed toward that for a long time. The SACI position is the perfect match of what I needed to do next and what San Antonio needed to do next. I have what I think is a dream job.”

Dr. Curiel received his Doctor of Medicine degree from Duke in 1982 and his Master of Public Health degree from Harvard the following year. He completed an internship and residency in medicine at Yale and was a clinical and research fellow in infectious diseases and medicine at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. He is board certified in internal medicine, infectious diseases and medical oncology.

In addition to his position as director of SACI, Dr. Curiel is director of cancer research at CTRC. At the Health Science Center, he is assistant dean for cancer research and interim dean of the division of medical oncology in the department of medicine.

Dr. Curiel is married to Ruth Berggren, M.D., a Harvard Medical School graduate who completed residencies and fellowships at Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. Board certified in infectious diseases, she is on the faculty of the Health Science Center’s division of infectious diseases. Dr. Curiel and Dr. Berggren have two children, Alex, 13, and Megan, 12.

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The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio is the leading research institution in South Texas and one of the major health sciences universities in the world. With an operating budget of $500 million, the Health Science Center is the chief catalyst for the $14 billion biosciences and health care industry, the leading sector in San Antonio’s economy. The Health Science Center has had an estimated $34 billion impact on the region since inception and has expanded to six campuses in San Antonio, Laredo, Harlingen and Edinburg. More than 20,500 graduates (physicians, dentists, nurses, scientists and allied health professionals) serve in their fields, including many in Texas. Health Science Center faculty are international leaders in cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, aging, stroke prevention, kidney disease, orthopaedics, research imaging, transplant surgery, pain management, genetics, nursing, allied health, dentistry and many other fields. For more information, visit www.uthscsa.edu.

Located in San Antonio, Texas, The Cancer Therapy and Research Center (CTRC) is one of the nation’s leading academic research and treatment centers, serving more than 4.4 million people in the high-growth corridor of Central and South Texas including Austin, San Antonio, Laredo and the Rio Grande Valley. CTRC handles more than 120,000 patient visits each year and is a world leader in developing new radiation therapies and drugs to treat cancer. CTRC’s principal research division, the Institute for Drug Development (IDD), is internationally recognized for conducting the largest oncology Phase I clinical drug trials program in the world. Fourteen of the cancer drugs most recently approved by the Food & Drug Administration underwent development or testing at the IDD. For more information, visit our Web site at www.ctrc.net.