Shane Morita, M.D., an oncologic surgeon at Queen’s Medical Center and the University of Hawaii, was named the second recipient of the North Central Cancer Treatment Group (NCCTG) Junior Faculty Academic Community Partnership Award. Dr. Morita will use the three-year award, which is funded through a grant from Millennium Pharmaceuticals, Inc., to conduct research on ethnic differences of melanoma.
Dr. Morita’s experiences as an oncologic surgeon in Hawaii led to the idea for his research on melanoma. “When I reviewed the data from the Hawaii Tumor Registry for 2000-2005, I found that although Caucasians comprised the vast majority of melanoma cases, non-Caucasians had a disproportionally higher mortality,” says Dr. Morita. “This project will be the first of its kind to investigate ethnic disparity of melanoma and explore the frequency of both germline as well as somatic mutations in a diverse, multi-ethnic population with the principal goal of improving overall patient care.”
Mayo Clinic oncologist Svetomir Markovic, M.D., Ph.D., will serve as Dr. Morita’s mentor during the award period.
The NCCTG Junior Faculty Academic Community Partnership Award was established in 2009 to recruit, train, mentor and support selected junior-level physicians at NCCTG member sites who will, in turn, become cancer research leaders within their local community practices. Bret Friday, M.D., Ph.D., an oncologist at Duluth Clinic in Duluth, Minn., received the first NCCTG Junior Faculty Academic Community Partnership and is currently conducting neuro-oncology research under the mentorship of Mayo Clinic oncologist Evanthia Galanis, M.D.
NCCTG is a national clinical research group sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, comprised of a network of more than 1,000 community-based cancer treatment clinics in the United States and Canada that work with Mayo Clinic to conduct clinical studies for advancing cancer treatment.
