MD Anderson Cancer Center’s Jennifer Litton on research, AI, and more

Dr. Jennifer Litton says advances in research and treatment of cancer are unfolding at a remarkably rapid pace.

Litton, a breast medical oncologist, is the chief clinical research officer for the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. She put the strides in research and cancer in perspective.

“It's changing so fast that in the traditional phase three randomized clinical trials, the standard of care arm, for the first time in my career, is changing before we're even done, and making that standard of care obsolete,” she says.

Litton spoke with Chief Healthcare Executive® while she was in Chicago for the Becker’s Healthcare 16th Annual Meeting. She attended the first summit on oncology, which brought together healthcare executives to talk about the latest in cancer.

In a conversation at the Fairmont Hotel, Litton talked about the progress in understanding cancer, how AI is leading to new research possibilities, and the strides in developing targeted therapies for cancer.

“Our knowledge of cancer is going through the roof,” Litton says. “It's because we're able to look at things in a detail that we couldn't do even a decade ago.”

Litton is also a breast cancer survivor. She was diagnosed last year, underwent surgery and completed radiation therapy. In a story published by MD Anderson, she said the early discovery of her cancer made a difference.

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‘AI is changing so much’

Litton says AI is beginning to have an impact on all aspects of oncology care.

“AI is changing so much in how we deliver care and in clinical research,” she says.

“In delivering care, we're seeing it in the way that we are doing ambient listening and the way we're coordinating care for patients,” she explains. “In clinical research, we're seeing it really start to affect so many of our processes. You're seeing it in clinical trial matching, how we activate trials, how we manage these complex basket trials, and all the things that go with them.”

Researchers are just scratching the surface with using AI to examine huge amounts of data on cancer patients, along with the digital analysis of imaging and complex genomic tests.

Now, Litton says all of that knowledge is coming together.

“You're going to see us use different ways of evaluating patients, you may say, moving really promising things sooner and doing a lot more with direct data on long-term efficacy and long-term toxicity, maybe even after those drugs are becoming available to patients, especially patients with rare tumors, or rare subsets now of very common tumors,” she says.

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‘An absolute game changer’

MD Anderson Cancer Center recently established a new cellular cancer institute, and Litton shares her enthusiasm about more potential advances.

Litton points to the work to change T cells, which protect the body from infection and are being used to help patients with cancer.

She says the institute is “looking at ways that we can change or use DNA to change the outcome for patients.”

“It's been an absolute game changer by manipulating the T cell receptor in a way that's curing cancers that we couldn't cure just five or 10 years ago,” Litton says. “And we're seeing those patients live longer and having survival benefit.”

Litton says researchers are working on different approaches where changing T cells may not be feasible.

“We're also knowing that not everyone can get ‘CAR T,” she says. “How are we going to get it to work effectively in patients with solid tumors, and for the patients whose tumors are so aggressive that they don't have the time to remove the cells, to engineer them, to grow them and then put them back in. How are we going to build those off-the-shelf products that potentially could be game-changing, not just because of how quickly we can give them, but the financial toxicity that goes with a lot of these therapies.

“We're spending a lot of our time thinking about how we're going to cure more cancers by using these new, engineered therapies,” Litton says.

Litton says she’s enthusiastic about the prospect of more targeted therapies.

“I'm very excited about how targeted we're getting and how much more we are individualizing therapy when we can,” she says. “I am excited about some of the new technology trying to identify precursors and then seeing if we can intervene earlier.”

She also sees encouraging results in work with cancer vaccines, which Litton says could potentially help patients avoid getting cancer in the first place.

“For years, we were told vaccines don't work, and now we've had some really intriguing vaccine work,” Litton says. “Because it's not just screening and finding things early. But if we can even prevent them, I think that would be one of the biggest game-changers.”

Accelerating approvals

Cancer researchers and patient advocates have bemoaned the amount of time spent in securing approvals for promising treatments.

But Litton credits the Food and Drug Administration for taking new steps to help make treatments available in a shorter timeline.

“I think we're seeing a lot of changes in the clinical research and getting drugs to patients faster,” she says. “I think that everyone is really partnering with the same goal, when we have a promising therapy, to move it up as early as possible for patients, not waiting for it to be the eighth or ninth line, and getting it to patients sooner.”

Litton says clinical trials are starting earlier and federal regulators are open to strategies to move faster.

“I think that we have had really excellent conversations in partnership with the FDA,” she continues. “They are absolutely just as dedicated at rethinking the process, and not doing trials just like we did it in the 1990s, to accelerate the change, so that we stay at the forefront of curing cancer.”

(Nicole Jussen interviewed Dr. Litton in Chicago.)