A gynecologic oncologist and researcher, Linda Duska, MD, MPH, has worked to make UVA Health a regional destination for clinical research in gynecologic cancers. In the past year, her research led to FDA approval of a new treatment for advanced cervical cancer, and she was part of a national endometrial cancer trial that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Duska's goal is for every GYN cancer patient here to have the opportunity to participate in a clinical trial and receive access to a novel treatment that might help them.
She discusses how recent clinical trials at UVA Health have advanced the standard of care for cervical, endometrial, and ovarian cancer, allowing women with cancer to access new and exciting treatments for their disease. And she answers our questions about what she's working on now, and the most intriguing aspect of her clinical research.
Watch Duska discuss why she loves clinical research as she studies novel therapies for gynecologic cancers.
What are you working on right now?
I am building the GYN oncology portfolio in order to ensure that every patient has an opportunity to participate in a clinical trial. In particular, over the past year, I have been working on building our phase I (first in human) program and our cell therapy program. Separately, I am working on a project with our Population Health group to make clinical trials more accessible for patients in rural Virginia.
What are the most intriguing clinical applications of your work?
Over the past year, we have seen 3 FDA approvals in GYN cancer — all were based on clinical trials that we had open at UVA Health. These were in ovarian, endometrial, and cervical cancers.
Our faculty also achieved authorship in all of these trials due to our high accruals. In particular, the study in cervical cancer was based on an investigator-initiated trial that was run out of UVA Health. I served as the national PI for the cervical cancer trial and got senior authorship on the published manuscript. UVA Health had the highest patient accrual in the U.S. on the cervical trial.
What discovery impacted the way you think?
The clinical studies I mention above not only led to FDA approval, but also changed the standard of care in these GYN cancers.
What made you choose UVA Health as the place to do your research?
I came to UVA in 2008 to be the fellowship director. I made it my goal to make UVA Health the place to go for clinical research in GYN cancers. Over time, we have definitely achieved that goal. We have unique trials open here that patients travel for. They come from as far as Minnesota.
What do you wish more people knew about your area of research?
I wish people understood that in GYN cancer, clinical research IS clinical care. Clinical research offers patients novel opportunities that might help them do better, and will also change how we take care of patients in the future.