October 2012 Newsletter

Drug Development and Clinical Trials

Amy-Lee Bredlau, M.D., M.C.R., was in the midst of her Fellowship in Pediatric Hematology-Oncology when she realized that, on the whole, the medical establishment does not do as good a job as we would like of making patients pain-free. She saw this front-and-center with her pediatric cancer patients whose pain resulted from the cancer itself and from the procedures they had to undergo. In deciding how to make a dent in this huge problem, Dr. Bredlau realized she had a lot to learn, not only about pain, but also about how to choose a drug to study, how to design the study so she could use the smallest number of subjects that would likely result in a usable answer to her questions, and how to analyze whatever results she obtained. Dr. Bredlau decided to do her study in the context of the University of Rochester Medical Center’s Masters program in Clinical Research. In her final two years of Fellowship training, she obtained her M. S.Cl.I., and designed, conducted, and analyzed in a peer-reviewed journal her study on the use of ketamine as a pain medication for patients with chronic pain. The manuscript for this project has since been submitted for publication. Dr. Bredlau’s initial work will pave the way for more specific studies of pain in children with cancer. This year, Dr. Bredlau became the Director of the Pediatric Brain Tumor Program for the Division of Pediatric Hematology-Oncology at Medical University of South Carolina; she holds an scholar position for Oncology Research in that Division.