Associate Director, NCI at Frederick

Spotlight Archive

Read part one of the Wiltrout/Reynolds management team Spotlight article.

[Editor’s note: How do Drs. Robert Wiltrout and Craig Reynolds view NCI at Frederick’s current and future roles within the NIH community? This is the second of two articles highlighting the thoughts, issues, and goals of the Wiltrout/Reynolds management team.]

“Foremost, our mission is to be a state-of-the-art research institution that can make important contributions in discovery, development, and delivery of new treatments that will reduce the burden of cancer and AIDS for the American people,” says Associate Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at Frederick, Dr. Robert Wiltrout.

Dr. Wiltrout and his colleague, Dr. Craig Reynolds (Director of the Office of Scientific Operations) have been working closely together in their first few months as leaders of the NCI at Frederick to apprise National Institutes of Health (NIH) division directors of the rich diversity of scientific research opportunities available here, to plan for possible redevelopment of the NCI at Frederick, and to reach out to the local community.

Dr. Wiltrout notes that NCI-Frederick is a top institute for basic discovery in molecular biology, immunology, and the hard sciences. “We’re developing, at the basic level, an understanding of the human genome and how the proteins that the genome encodes interact and influence disease, and how they can be manipulated to resolve diseases.”

Thus, one of Dr. Wiltrout’s major responsibilities is to work with Dr. Andrew von Eschenbach (NCI Director) and division directors to ensure that NCI-Frederick resources are utilized as is best for the NCI, and NCI’s partners, including other institutes, the NIH, and the Department of Defense (DOD).

With a unique biopharmaceutical development capability, NCI-Frederick for the past decade has been at the forefront of translational research, turning cutting-edge laboratory research into practical, clinical applications: its scientists refine investigators’ findings and produce enough clinical-grade material so those reagents can be provided to intramural and extramural clinical groups for treatment of patients.

“Scientists in Frederick maintain close links to the NIH Clinical Center by monitoring the patients’ immune system responses to these experimental treatments to determine whether the new reagents or new drugs are having the desired effect, so clinical investigators can decide what the next set of patient studies might be. It’s that interdisciplinary interaction between high-quality basic research, cutting-edge technologies, and unique resources that makes the efforts here unique and important,” Dr. Wiltrout explains.

Along with these existing interdisciplinary interactions, Dr. Wiltrout wants to foster new partnerships on projects between scientists with differing expertise and between scientific organizations. “As a Federally-Funded Research and Development Center, we’re uniquely positioned to play a key role in translational research and at the same time, establish new partnerships to increase the impact even more broadly. Because of this explosion of information and technologies in the last five years, and the complexity of science, it’s very difficult for an individual scientist to do a large research project. We partner with NIAID [the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases] to share resources and intellectual interactions. Even beyond NIH, opportunities exist for partnerships with other federal agencies, such as USAMRIID [United States Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases], the Food and Drug Administration, and private biotechnology and biopharmaceutical companies, to join their unique perspectives and areas of expertise in scientific projects. We believe that such cooperation will also help to accelerate development toward the clinic,” Dr. Wiltrout says.

“We have also been supporting the Army’s biodefense mission, and will continue to support a partnership between the Army and NIAID, by providing them with access to NCI’s research technologies and perhaps helping them produce reagents for trials. Thus, although our primary mission remains cancer, the resources now being developed at NCI at Frederick can have value and impact to other organizations as well,” he emphasizes.

Dr. von Eschenbach believes that enhancing NCI-Frederick’s research capabilities will provide even greater opportunities for the NCI, the NIH, and other organizations. Therefore, Dr. Wiltrout and Dr. Reynolds are assisting in the development of a master plan to improve the current facility capabilities and determine the need for new facilities. Many NCI-Frederick staff work in buildings a half-century old, which can limit the overall efficiency of the scientific effort. “We continue to put renovation ‘band aids’ on our buildings, but for NCI-Frederick to increase its impact, we have to improve the physical structure,” Dr. Wiltrout explains. Both he and Dr. Reynolds are “excited to be involved in planning for possible improvements and partnerships for NCI-Frederick. It’s a unique opportunity to increase the visibility and effectiveness of Frederick as a site for basic discovery and development that benefits the American people.”

In addition to identifying the needs of the NCI, Dr. Wiltrout and others have been meeting with community leaders to raise the visibility of NCI-Frederick’s role in the local community as it pursues its mission to cure cancer and AIDS. Being the second largest employer in the county, NCI-Frederick has a huge financial impact.

However, the NCI-Frederick assists the local community in other ways as well. Educational outreach programs, which place scientists in the classroom to teach children, perhaps for the first time, about the scientific method and the excitement of scientific discovery, begin in the elementary school. The Werner Kirsten Student Intern Program gives high school students practical experience in scientific research as they work in NCI-Frederick laboratories; college students are provided an even more in-depth scientific experience. “That whole set of programs, based on bringing science to the public at the level of the educational system, is exciting,” Dr. Wiltrout says. “You just don’t get many opportunities in life where what you do can make a difference; and the staff of NCI-Frederick is making differences in many ways.”

Article by Maritta Perry Grau
Photography by Jonathan Summers
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National Cancer Institute at Frederick