Meet Dr. Francine Foss

Transcript

• 00:00Hello, I'm doctor Francine Foss.
• 00:02I'm a professor of medicine in hematology
• 00:05and oncology here at the Yale Cancer Center.
• 00:08I specialize in stem cell transplantation
• 00:10and the treatment of lymphomas.
• 00:12In particular, I'm the director of the
• 00:14T Cell lymphoma group here at Yale.
• 00:17I've been doing T cell
• 00:18lymphoma for a very long time.
• 00:21I started back at the National Cancer
• 00:23Institute where I was running their
• 00:25program and then I segued into studying
• 00:28some of the novel biologic therapies.
• 00:30And how they apply to T cell lymphoma.
• 00:33We actually have a team of folks
• 00:36here that work with us in our clinic,
• 00:39in the lymphoma clinic,
• 00:40in particular for T cell lymphoma
• 00:42we have a nurse practitioner.
• 00:44We have several practice nurses and
• 00:46we have nurses that are specializing
• 00:48in the skin care for patients
• 00:51with cutaneous lymphoma.
• 00:52We also have social workers,
• 00:54dieticians and other folks that
• 00:56collaborate with our patients
• 00:57and in hope that we actually can
• 01:00optimize care for the whole patient.
• 01:02For the whole person,
• 01:03not just for their disease.
• 01:05T cell lymphomas are rare lymphomas.
• 01:07They're about 10% of all lymphomas
• 01:09in the United States and their
• 01:12treatment of T cell lymphoma has
• 01:14really undergone evolution based
• 01:15on some of the newer research.
• 01:17Typically we would give
• 01:19patients chemotherapy,
• 01:20but what we've learned is that if we
• 01:22add some of these newer biological
• 01:24therapies and targeted agents,
• 01:26patients are actually doing a lot better,
• 01:29so our treatments now are tailored
• 01:31toward identifying specific.
• 01:32Factors in the tumor,
• 01:34such as expression of different
• 01:35proteins or pathways that might
• 01:37direct us to use specific drugs as
• 01:40opposed to general chemotherapy.
• 01:41We are doing a lot of research here at
• 01:44the Yale Cancer Center in T cell lymphoma,
• 01:47and that's multifaceted,
• 01:49including a number of different departments.
• 01:51Here at the medical school,
• 01:53we're looking at novel ways of imaging
• 01:55using different types of pet scanning.
• 01:57For instance,
• 01:58we're also collaborating with our
• 02:00colleagues in pharmacology and
• 02:02in the basic science departments.
• 02:04To develop new therapies,
• 02:05one of the things that I'm interested
• 02:07in are key McKean directed therapies,
• 02:09and in particular a new car T cell
• 02:12therapy that we are now developing.