Joan M.C. Bull, M.D.

DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF ONCOLOGY

PROFESSOR

713-500-6820

Joan Bull, M.D. is a full Professor and Director of the Division of Oncology at the University of Texas Medical School. She obtained her medical degree from Stanford University Medical School after graduating with a B.A. in Biology from Stanford University. After Internship at the University of Chicago Hospital, she returned to Stanford University Medical School for her Residency in Internal Medicine. For the next 10 years, Dr. Bull held research positions at the National Cancer Institute, first as Medical Officer, then Special Research Fellow, Senior Staff Fellow, and finally Senior Investigator in the Division of Cancer Treatment. It was at the National Cancer Intstitute that she began her research into hyperthermia. In 1980, Dr. Bull came to Houston as Associate Professor in the Division of Hematology/Oncology of the Department of Internal Medicine and began her own research program in whole body hyperthermia. She is Director of the Oncology Clinic at Hermann Hospital, and also a member of the attending staff at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

 

R. Wanda Rowe, Ph.D.

RESEARCH SCIENTIST

713-500-7760

Dr. Rowe is a physicist by training, who obtained her Ph.D. in Medical Physics from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland through research on Single Photon Computed Tomography (SPECT), a now widespread nuclear medicine imaging technique. She was subsequently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the IBM UK Scientific Research Centre, researching image reconstruction in medical ultrasound imaging, and at Brookhaven National Laboratory, performing quantitative SPECT imaging research. Her medical imaging experience broadened further when she spent three years developing an ophthalmic imaging system and associated image processing techniques at North Shore University Hospital, a teaching hospital of Cornell University. In 1986, she moved to Texas to join the faculty in the Positron Diagnostic & Research Center at The University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, where she carried out research into methods of improving the accuracy of Positron Emission Tomographic (PET) imaging. In the course of studying the ability of PET to monitor response to cancer therapy, she began what became a long-standing collaboration with Dr. Joan Bull, Director of the Hyperthermia Laboratory. In 1991, Dr. Rowe formally joined the Division of Oncology and became a member of the Hyperthermia Laboratory. Following on an investigation of the effect of immune stimulators on tumor PET imaging, Dr. Rowe's research continued with studies of the induction of different types of cell death by hyperthermia combined with chemotherapy, the hyperthermic enhancement of liposome delivery to tumors, the relationship of microvasculature development during tumor growth to metastatic invasion, and modeling of tumor growth. She performs most of the data analysis for the hyperthermia laboratory, as well as assisting with experimental design, technical writing, and information technology. Dr. Rowe is an author of 23 peer reviewed scientific publications as well as many abstracts and scientific presentations. She teaches in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and is also an occasional reviewer of grants and papers, a scientific consultant, and a science fair judge. For many years a member of the Society for Nuclear Medicine, Dr. Rowe is currently a member of the American Association for Cancer Research and the South Texas Chapter of the Health Physics Society.

Frederick R. Strebel, B.S.

LABORATORY MANAGER

713-500-6816

Mr. Strebel has been manager of the Hyperthermia Research Laboratory in the Division of Oncology at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston since 1983. He graduated from Dickinson College, PA with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Biology. After 6 years as a Research Technician at New York Medical College, Mr. Strebel came to Houston where he held Research Assistant positions, first at Baylor College of Medicine and then at the University of Texas Medical School. He also embarked on graduate studies in epidemiology at the University of Texas School of Public Health. He is now a Senior Research Associate, and much in demand for his expertise in experimental laboratory animal models and techniques in cancer research, especially rodent tumor models requiring intravenous (tail vein) injection of anti-cancer therapeutic agents. He has co-authored, and been critical in the research work leading to, more than 30 publications on thermal therapy of cancer generated by our Research Laboratory. Mr. Strebel is responsible for maintaining all of the tumor cell lines for the Hyperthermia Research Laboratory, and has pioneered the development of a safe, effective, and highly reproducible method for inducing therapeutic, long-duration, fever-range whole body thermal therapy (FR-WB-TT) in rats bearing highly metastatic experimental tumors. He has tailored our experimental thermal therapy and tumor model(s) to further develop new, more effective, and less toxic, multi-modality cancer treatment(s) combining thermal therapy with systemically administered chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and/or gene therapy with a view to rapid clinical translation for cancer patients.

Madelene Ottosen , R.N. , M.S.N.

NURSE MANAGER, UNIVERSITY CLINICAL RESEARCH CENTER

713-704-4147

 

Mary Brimer, R.N.

CLINICAL DIRECTOR, MEMORIAL HERMANN ONCOLOGY CLINIC

To Come