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UAB News: UAB takes lead with 80 by 2018 initiative to increase employee colorectal cancer screenings

The University of Alabama at Birmingham is taking the lead as the largest employer in Alabama and a major academic medical center to encourage all of its employees who are eligible to get a colorectal cancer screening.

In partnering with the American Cancer Society as part of a national initiative, the overall goal is to eliminate colorectal cancer as a major public health problem by working toward having 80 percent of adults ages 50 and older regularly screened for colorectal cancer by 2018.

Colorectal cancer is the nation’s second-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in men and women combined. However, through proper colorectal cancer screening, doctors can find and remove hidden growths called polyps in the colon before they become cancerous. Removing polyps can prevent cancer altogether.

March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, and UAB has formally kicked off its own “80 by 18” effort. UAB leaders President Ray Watts, M.D., CEO of the UAB Health System Will Ferniany, Ph.D., and director of the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center Edward Partridge, M.D., have joined forces in a university wide effort to reach 80 percent of eligible UAB employees to get screened by 2018.

“As an academic medical institution, we collectively realize the importance of this initiative. This is a responsibility we have, but it’s also a real opportunity to save lives and be an example to our community and state,” Partridge said. “Colorectal cancer is one cancer that can actually be prevented and where screening can make the difference between getting cancer or not.”

In Alabama, a patient is diagnosed with colorectal cancer every 3.5 hours and someone dies of the disease every nine hours. Alabama has an estimated 392,100 people who should be screened. And based on data from UAB’s insurance carriers, it is estimated that UAB and UAB Medicine have more than 1,800 employees who should be screened.

“We can do better as a community and change these numbers. Some of the screening tests may seem daunting; but there are several acceptable methods that are simple, safe and widely used,” Partridge said. “People aren’t getting tested because they don’t believe they are at risk or don’t understand their testing options, or don’t think they can afford it.”

Employees who are eligible at UAB have been encouraged to educate themselves with detailed information, to speak to their physicians about their history and to inquire about the colorectal screening options that are available.

Common screening tests include a flexible sigmoidoscopy, colonoscopy, CT colonography or double-contrast barium enema. Other tests include a guaiac-based fecal occult blood test (gFOBT), fecal immunochemical test (FIT) or stool DNA test (sDNA test). In most of these cases, tests are performed every five to 10 years or, in a few cases, yearly. Some tests may require a copay depending on insurance; however, many public and private insurance companies cover the screening.

Employees can sign a pledge to show their commitment in the effort. Also, as a part of UAB Employee Wellness, they may log into My Heath Rewards to earn points three different ways:

March 22 Lunch and Learn – Take Control of Your Health: Get Tested for Colorectal Cancer (500 points)
Monthly Health Education /Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month – March 2016 (500 points)
Colorectal Cancer Awareness Activity (1,000 points)

Employees will be provided updates and information on progress.

“We want to hammer home that this disease is highly preventable, detectable and treatable; but we need to take action,” Partridge said.

http://www.uab.edu/news/focus-on-patient-care/item/7048

Restorative yoga classes provide healing rest for cancer survivors!

Imagine coming to a soothing space where you are REQUIRED to turn off your phone and just rest and refresh yourself — mind, body and spirit. It’s a gift! And that’s w Yoga hat UAB’s Comprehensive Cancer Center offers cancer patients and survivors through its restorative yoga program. Classes meet once a week at Embody Practice Center on Montclair Road, and instructor Suzanne Graham leads students through some gentle stretching exercises before helping them into so-called restorative postures. It is a yummy place to be! The cost to participants is $50 for a 10-week course. That’s $5 for an hour of relaxation and healing — a bargain! The spring classes have just begun. The options are midday Wednesday and Thursday evening. If you are interested and want to register, email Diane Wood at [email protected].

P.S. You don’t have to be a UAB patient to participate!

Malaria Protein Accidentally Found to Be Cancer-Killing Weapon

malaria-infects-red-blood-cell-Publicdomain-NIH-NIAID.jpg

By Terry Turner/Good News Network/Oct. 16, 2015

Scientists for decades have been searching for similarities between a placenta and a tumor, because both grow so aggressively. Now they have stumbled upon one–and inadvertently, a possible powerful treatment for multiple kinds of cancer.

The researchers were looking for something completely different — a vaccine to protect pregnant mothers and their children from malaria – and in their quest found a malaria protein that effectively destroyed 90% of a wide range of cancer cells, from leukemia to brain tumors.

They noticed the carbohydrate that the malaria cells attach itself to in the placenta is identical to the one found in cancer cells. They then took the protein in malaria and added a toxin to it, turning it loose on cancer. The modified malaria protein latched onto cancer cells in the tests, released the toxin, and destroying almost all cancer cells in their tracks.

Since scientists use only the protein created in a laboratory instead of the actual malaria cell, there’s no risk of the patient developing malaria.

The teams working at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark and the University of British Columbia in Canada published their findings this week in the journal Cancer Cell.

“It appears that the malaria protein attaches itself to the tumor without any significant attachment to other tissue,” said an optimistic Thomas Mandel Clausen, a Ph.D. student at the University of Copenhagen. “And the mice that were given doses of protein and toxin showed far higher survival rates than the untreated mice. We have seen that three doses can arrest growth in a tumor and even make it shrink.”

“I think there’s some irony to the fact that you can take a serious disease such as Malaria…and then use it to target another dreadful disease,” said Mads Daugaard, Senior Scientist at Vancouver Prostate Center, and one of the authors of the research.

Human trials for the cancer treatment are now being planned.

See the video!

http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/malaria-protein-accidentally-found-to-be-cancer-killing-weapon/#

UAB study finds possible frontline therapy for older patients with Hodgkin Lymphoma

By Beena Thannickal/UAB News/Oct. 5, 2015

andres forero1

A new University of Alabama at Birmingham research study reports that brentuximab vedotin is an effective and safe first course of treatment for older patients with Hodgkin lymphoma that cannot be treated with conventional combination chemotherapy.

Results of the study, led by Andres Forero, M.D., professor in the UAB Division of Hematology and Oncology, were published online last month in Blood, the journal of the American Society of Hematology.

In 2014, about 9,190 patients were diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma in the United States, and up to 20 percent of newly diagnosed Hodgkin Lymphoma patients are 60 years of age or older.

While standard chemotherapy can achieve complete remissions and cures in younger patients with Hodgkin lymphoma, the majority of those 60 and older either are ineligible because of other serious medical conditions or refuse treatment in order to avoid complications related to drug toxicity.

“The biology in older patients may differ from that of younger patients,” Forero said. “Additionally, the presence of other illnesses, particularly cardiac dysfunction, may limit administration of standard regimens. It became clear to us that, as the rate of remission is much lower for older compared to younger Hodgkin lymphoma patients, there is a clear need for less toxic treatments that allow patients 60 and older to complete their full regimen without complications or interruptions.”

Forero, a senior scientist at the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center, has a long history of developing promising therapies for lymphoma and of working with drugs like brentuximab vedotin, a therapy that targets Hodgkin lymphoma cells and delivers a potent dose of chemotherapy without harming healthy cells. In previous studies, brentuximab vedotin has been shown to achieve remissions in patients with relapsed or treatment-resistant disease.

To examine the potential of brentuximab vedotin as a first course of treatment for older Hodgkin lymphoma patients, Forero and his team evaluated 26 patients, ages 64-92, who were ineligible for conventional chemotherapy or declined treatment after receiving information about its risks. The aim was to gather more information about the safety of brentuximab vedotin and how well it worked.

Researchers administered 1.8 mg/kg of intravenous brentuximab vedotin treatment every three weeks for up to 16 doses. Those who benefited from the drug could continue beyond this time period until disease progression, unacceptable toxicity or study closure. Patients received a median of eight cycles, with four completing 16 and one completing 23 cycles.

“In this population of older patients with Hodgkin lymphoma who were unfit for standard chemotherapy, we observed that brentuximab vedotin as a single agent produced a very high rate of response, including a very high rate of complete remission,” Forero said.

At the time of analysis, 92 percent of patients achieved a complete or partial response to the drug that lasted about 9.1 months. Of those, 73 percent achieved a complete remission that lasted about 9.2 months. The treatment was generally well-tolerated and consistent with previous reports of brentuximab vedotin in patients with relapsed and treatment-resistant Hodgkin lymphoma. As expected, the toxicity that was observed was mild and reversible sensory neuropathy, which is decreased sensitivity in the fingers and toes. Fewer than half of the patients experienced fatigue and nausea.

“While we observed promising responses, the next step is to evaluate this drug in combination with additional chemotherapy or immunotherapies that might allow us to prolong the response without relapse,” Forero said.

Direct funding for this research was issued by Seattle Genetics, Inc., through the joint financial support of Seattle Genetics, Inc., and Takeda Pharmaceuticals International Co.

http://www.uab.edu/news/focus-on-patient-care/item/6569-uab-study-finds-possible-frontline-therapy-for-older-patients-with-hodgkin-lymphoma

Mayo Clinic awarded $13.3 million grant to test cancer vaccine

Keitha Nelson, First Coast News 10:08 p.m. EDT September 15, 2015

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Triple-negative breast cancer affects about 15-20 percent of women with breast cancer. Experts say it’s very aggressive and deadly.

The Mayo Clinic has received a $13.3 million dollar grant from the U.S. Department of Defense’s Breast Cancer Research Program to fund a clinical trial. Researchers believe they now have a vaccine that could bring new found hope to those who have been told in the past that there are no targeted therapies for the disease they’re fighting.

Donna Deegan of the Donna Foundation, is a three-time breast cancer survivor who battled triple-negative breast cancer. She was first diagnosed in 1999 and then again in 2002.

“I remember when I was first diagnosed with breast cancer and my daughter was really small and when I wrote my first book I wrote that I hope by the time she has to worry about this that cancer is just a word in the medical history books,” said Deegan. “She’s 23 now and I think we are a long way towards making that happen.”

The 26.2 with Donna Breast Cancer Marathon has raised more than $4 million since it launched eight years ago. That seed money has been planted into research at Mayo and has led to a vaccine designed to prevent the recurrence of triple-negative breast cancer.

“What we want to do is intervene during that period between conventional therapy and when they relapse and see if we can boost the body’s immune defenses to fight off that relapse,” said Dr. Keith Knutson in the Department of Immunology at Mayo Clinic’s Florida campus.

The Defense Department’s program studying breast cancer has awarded the Mayo Clinic a $13.3 million grant. Dr. Knutson who designed the vaccine, says this trial is the next step in the progress of moving a new drug from the laboratory into routine clinical use. Nearly 300 patients at clinical sites across the nation will take part in the testing.

“This is the first time. And it’s really exciting to see that for all of these women who have been told basically, ‘We don’t have anything for you besides chemotherapy,’ now ‘We do, maybe,'” said Deegan. “We’ll find out when this trial is done.”

Dr. Knutson says the vaccine would be applicable to a wide variety of cancers. So there’s a possibility that it could prevent the recurrence of other cancers as well. The clinical trial is expected to begin early next year. For information on trials, call the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center at 1-855-776-0015.

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/story/news/health/2015/09/15/mayo-clinic-awarded-133-million-grant-to-test-cancer-vaccine/72325870/?linkId=17078565&utm_content=21565449&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

HudsonAlpha and UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center launch consortium, announce multiple hires

August 19, 2014

The HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology and the University of Alabama at Birmingham Comprehensive Cancer Center have established a joint cancer research consortium that will combine pioneering efforts to diagnose, treat and care for patients and families affected by cancer. As a demonstration of each institution’s commitment to tackling the second leading cause of death in the United States, both organizations announced their intention to hire multiple faculty investigators in cancer genomics.

Genomics is the study of the entirety of deoxyribonucleic acid within a living organism. DNA contains the instructions for the development and function of all living organisms and many viruses. As such, the molecular basis for a great deal of human disease is believed to be in the genome.

“We aim to have a global impact. Over the last five years, researchers have really begun to recognize the broad role that DNA plays in all human diseases,” said Richard M. Myers, Ph.D., HudsonAlpha’s president and science director. “Bringing genomics to the forefront in cancer health care is one of HudsonAlpha’s biggest projects. We have research in breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and kidney and prostate cancer, to name a few, and for us, a partnership with one of the most respected NCI comprehensive cancer centers will help us fulfill our mission.”

HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology is a nonprofit research institute dedicated to realizing the promise of genomics in medical, agricultural, educational and commercial practice. Since opening its doors in 2008, HudsonAlpha has expended more than $30 million on cancer-related research and generated more than a half-dozen discoveries related to genomic techniques and biomarkers.

The UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center is one of only 41 comprehensive cancer centers in the United States, and the only one in the Deep South’s six-state region, meeting the stringent criteria for the designation awarded by the National Cancer Institute. To garner this designation, the UAB CCC possesses the region’s greatest depth and breadth in laboratory, clinical and population-based research, as well as substantial transdisciplinary research that bridges these scientific areas. It has held the designation continuously since 1973.

The UAB CCC is home to more than 350 physician-scientists and researchers with the largest group of cancer specialists in Alabama who focus on specific cancer disciplines. Patients also have access to more than 180 cancer-related clinical trials, positioning the UAB CCC to solve the problem of cancer while providing the best possible care to the patients they serve.

The UAB-HudsonAlpha Cancer Consortium formalizes the two organizations’ fruitful collaborations dating from 2010. The Consortium’s goals are to improve cancer patient diagnosis, treatment and care through research and to reduce disparities in cancer outcomes among different demographic groups. The UAB CCC and HudsonAlpha have individual education and public outreach programs that are complementary and will likely amplify each other’s impact.

“Our philosophy is that we’re better together,” Myers said. “Genomics is a highly dynamic field with a great deal of potential. Its application also requires a great deal of experience to interpret the vast quantities of data generated by sequencing DNA and performing other experiments on the human genome. This is where HudsonAlpha excels, and we need partners who are experts at clinical diagnosis, treatment and care so that we can relate genomic data to patient attributes. Getting the most out of new discoveries so that we impact patient care substantially and quickly is the reason HudsonAlpha was founded.”

“Both of our organizations have a passion for improving the lives of those affected by cancer,” said Edward E. Partridge, M.D., director of the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center. “The UAB CCC serves about 5,000 new patients and provides oncology to more than 20,000 patients annually, and we are determined to bring state-of-the-art genomics to their care. Partnering with HudsonAlpha brings to this challenge a deep reservoir of knowledge about the genetic and epigenetic basis for human disease, as well as HudsonAlpha’s leadership in devising genomic techniques.”

In recent years, as part of its mission to expand and grow its centers, the National Cancer Institute has encouraged the development of consortium cancer centers, especially those that reach into geographic regions that have unmet needs and opportunities to improve cancer health care.

As a cancer consortium, UAB and HudsonAlpha create an attractive destination for researchers in cancer genomics. HudsonAlpha intends to hire multiple faculty investigators, especially those with an interest in cancer genomics and computational biology, who will be part of the UAB-HudsonAlpha Cancer Consortium, taking full advantage of UAB’s clinical setting and HudsonAlpha’s genomics expertise and state-of-the-art infrastructure. Faculty investigators carry joint or adjunct appointments at both institutions.

The UAB-HudsonAlpha Cancer Consortium is one part of the institutions’ joint venture, which also includes the UAB-HudsonAlpha Center for Genomic Medicine announced earlier this summer with the intention of incorporating research knowledge into predicting and diagnosing personalized therapies and cures.

HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology
Media Contact: Heather Smith
[email protected]
256-327-0443

UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center
Media Contact: Beena Thannickal
[email protected]
205-975-3967

About HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology: The HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology possesses a unique concentration of genomics expertise and infrastructure, thanks to more than $200 million invested by private philanthropists and the state of Alabama and externally sponsored research. The nonprofit research institute houses in its facilities a unique blend of nonprofit scientists and for-profit entrepreneurs and corporate leaders who share know-how and challenges across organizational boundaries — an arrangement designed to accelerate application and commercialization.

About the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center: The UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center is among the 41 cancer centers in the nation that meet the stringent criteria for the National Cancer Institute’s comprehensive designation. The center is a leader in groundbreaking research and patient care, and in reducing cancer disparities.

http://hudsonalpha.org/press-releases/hudsonalpha-and-uab-comprehensive-cancer-center-launch-consortium-announce-multiple-hires

New cancer treatment shrinking tumors in clinical trials

By Anne McNamara — www.thedenverchannel.com

New cancer treatment shrinking tumors in clinical trials

2:07 PM, Aug 26, 2015

DENVER – Doctors at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus say they discovered a cancer-causing gene and found drugs to fight it.

The treatment, now in clinical trials, appears to be shrinking tumors — fast.

Patient Nichol Miller, who traveled to Colorado from her home in Oregon, credits the treatment with saving her life. Chemotherapy had stopped working and the tumors in her lungs were still growing, when she first decided to visit Colorado for clinical trials in December.

“When I got my diagnosis, I was like… failure is not an option. I’ll beat this somehow, some way,” said Miller.

She is working with Dr. Robert Doebele, who discovered a cancer-causing gene back in 2012 in another patient. Dr. Doebele says he also found the drugs to block its activity — the same drugs Miller is taking.

The “before and after” pictures of Miller’s lungs show the treatment is working — fast.

“She had very extensive tumor involvement in both lungs,” said Dr. Doebele. “Now, it’s very hard to find involvement in either lung.”

Miller is the first patient in the trial with the abnormal gene. Doebele says her case proves what he discovered in the lab works in humans. Miller hopes others can experience the same success.

“It’s amazing,” she said. “It’s given me back my future.”

The goal is to get FDA approval for the new drug, but Doebele says that will take at least two years.

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/lifestyle/health/new-cancer-treatment-shrinking-tumors-in-clinical-trials

In cancer’s aftermath, helping survivors confront “late effects” — UAB News

By Matt Windsor/UAB News/July 16

This article is adapted from a video interview with Dr. Bhatia on UAB’s MD Learning Channel.

Even after cancer is defeated, it can cast a lifelong shadow. “Cancer survivorship represents a very critical phase,” said Smita Bhatia, M.D., M.P.H., a pediatric oncologist and director of the new Institute for Cancer Outcomes and Survivorship in the UAB School of Medicine and associate director for cancer outcomes research at the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center. “We and others have shown in our research studies that our cancer survivors are a vulnerable population,” she said. “When you follow them long-term, you find that they have a very high burden of chronic health conditions.”

Often, these health problems can be linked back to cancer treatments, including chemotherapy, radiation and even surgeries, Bhatia said. Because these complications can occur “many years after the completion of treatment,” they are called “late effects.” One example involves a particular class of chemotherapy drug known as anthracyclines. “We use these agents often because they are highly effective in a large variety of cancers,” Bhatia said. But research shows that patients who take these drugs have a high risk of developing congestive heart failure many years later.

Girls who have “received radiation to the chest around puberty for lymphoma,” have “an increased risk of breast cancer,” Bhatia added. And this breast cancer “occurs at a much younger age than would be anticipated in the general population. So these girls are developing breast cancer at age 30 and 40, whereas in the general population you’d be anticipating breast cancer at age 60.”

Results from a survey have shown that only a third of patients realize they are at risk for these late effects, and because the family practitioners and internists who are seeing these patients do not encounter cancer survivors very often, “it is not in the forefront in terms of their understanding, in terms of their knowledge base and in terms of their experience of what they should anticipate,” Bhatia said. Addressing this situation becomes even more urgent as the number of survivors grows, she adds. “The number of cancer survivors is growing at the rate of about 2 percent every year,” Bhatia said. “We will, by about 2022, have 18 million cancer survivors.”

That is why UAB is establishing special survivorship clinics. “In order to provide the most comprehensive long-term care to our survivors, we need care plans,” Bhatia said. These “are essentially a summary of all the treatment that the patients received for their particular cancer, along with recommendations for long-term follow-up in order to detect complications.”

The idea, Bhatia said, is to lay out “a roadmap for our cancer survivors for life. That’s what I would like to do for all our cancer survivors who are coming to UAB, no matter what diagnosis they have, no matter what their age is, from here on.”

Survivorship clinics are staffed by physicians, nurse practitioners, social workers, psychologists, and dietitians, “who provide absolutely comprehensive but very tailored care to the survivors,” Bhatia said. “So we would, for example, do heart tests in order to detect heart failure at an earlier stage only amongst patients who’ve received treatments that are toxic to the heart. Mammograms would be recommended for patients who’ve received radiation to the chest at a young age, and who are at risk for breast cancer.”

This “very tailored but anticipatory screening” is designed “to detect these complications at an earlier stage,” said Bhatia.

The same survivorship model can now be extended to care for patients with many different chronic health conditions, Bhatia says. These include patients with sickle cell disease, HIV, congenital heart disease — “any chronic condition where the health care providers can really coordinate the care of the patient as a whole, the entirety of their health, and provide complete and comprehensive care long-term.”

http://www.uab.edu/mix/stories/in-cancer-s-aftermath-helping-survivors-confront-late-effects

Teen Knocks Out Cancer, Celebrates Victory By Running Up Iconic ‘Rocky’ Steps — Huffington Post

He’s no boxer, but 13-year-old Sean Bartolucci is celebrating a knockout victory that Rocky Balboa would be proud of: He battled cancer — and won.

On Sunday, Bartolucci, wearing a “Keep Calm And Fight On” t-shirt (his motto over the past few months), followed in Rocky’s iconic footsteps by climbing the stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. When he got to the top, the teen raised his arms in triumph.

It was a poignant moment.

Bartolucci, an eighth-grader at Pennsylvania’s Camp Hill High School, was diagnosed with neuroblastoma in 2014. Since then, the teen has reportedly undergone multiple surgeries, several rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, and a stem cell transplant.

Bartolucci’s family says the teen had vowed to run up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art — a move made famous in the film “Rocky,” which starred Sylvester Stallone — once he was cancer-free.

“What a great moment to get him here, not just the steps — it’s monumental — but the journey he’s been on the last 18 months. He fought hard,” his mother Michele Bartolucci told WPVI-TV.

His dad Chris told The Patriot-News that the run up the stairs was like “putting an exclamation point at the end of all of this crap.”

“Now [Sean] can be a kid again,” he said.

Bartolucci has reportedly been cancer-free for several months. — Huffington Post

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/teen-runs-rocky-steps-cancer-sean-bartolucci_55a3359ce4b0a47ac15cc3a5?utm_content=18049759&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook

Cancer survivor, Olympic hopeful Seun Adebiyi on the way up while going downhill — Mark McCarter/al.com

Mark McCarter | [email protected] By Mark McCarter | [email protected]
Email the author | Follow on Twitter
on July 05, 2015 at 1:02 PM, updated July 06, 2015 at 3:13 PM

So, what comes after the comma?

Is it, Seun Adebiyi, cancer survivor? Or international cancer activist? Or author? Or Olympic hopeful? Or, most incongrously, Seun Adebiyi, Winter Olympic hopeful from Nigeria?

18237990-mmmain Adebiyi, Nigerian-born and raised in Huntsville, answers to all those.

A talented swimmer in his youth, he barely missed making Summer Olympic teams. Then – light bulb moment! – he decided on the preposterous notion to create a Winter Olympics team for “acountry that doesn’t have winter.” He chose the skeleton, the small sled that zips down a curved, banked course where “you get a running start, do a belly flop and hold on for dear life.”

That’s what Adebiyi has been doing for most of his 32 years, even when snow wasn’t even anywhere in his life.

His mother, the Oxford-educated Dr. Bimpe Adebiyi, brought him to Huntsville when he was six, leaving her post as a dean at the University of Sokoto to study at Mississippi University for Women, then moving to Huntsville to work as a professor at UAH and, later, at Alabama A&M.

In the meantime, young Seun was “a rambunctious kid” in his words. Or, as Bimpe recalls a family friend’s description, “one of those made-in-China toys where the spring is broken and it just keeps going.” To burn off some energy, she enrolled him in a local swimming program, where he began to excel.
He transferred from Huntsville High to Jacksonville’s Bolles School as a senior to accelerate training for the 2000 Olympics, but an injury derailed him. He enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh, earning a degree in math and classics while training for the 2004 Games; alas, he missed by one-tenth of a second.

Adebiyi was accepted at Yale Law School. That’s where a life-altering barbecue was held. He gathered some friends to brainstorm over his best Winter Olympic possibility for 2010. After watching some winter events on YouTube, the skeleton was the consensus.

He went to a training run in March 2009 in Lake Placid, N.Y., where “basically all they did was hand me a helmet, said, ‘Your head goes here. Here are the handles. Hold on tight.’ And they just shoved me down the track.”

He is not a risk-taker or adrenaline junkie. But “I got to the bottom and I went, ‘I’ve got to try that again,” Adebiyi says. “I had a chance to make sports history.”

Then came cancer.

It was a week after he graduated from law school and a week before his 26^th birthday when he was diagnosed with two aggressive forms of cancer, This wasn’t a training injury or a too-slow time to keep him from the Olympics. This was life and death, as he’s recently detailed in a first-person story on “The Players’ Tribune,” a website founded by Derek Jeter.

While competitors were hurtling downhill in Vancouver, he was watching in an isolation ward, having gone through radiation and a stem-cell transplant, “beat up and (I) pretty much had one foot in the grave.”

Seun Adebiyi is a cancer survivor who is hoping to qualifying for the next two Olympic Games. His mother, Dr. Bimpe Adebiyi, a Huntsville resident, talks about her son.

Adebiyi was also resolute, vowing, “If I get out of this bed, I’m going to take that second chance and run with it. That’s what drives me now. God gave me a second chance and I’m just going to run with it.”

Out of the hospital but so weak that others had to carry his 80-pound sled to the course, he moved to Utah to resume training. As he writes in The Players’ Tribune, “I definitely was being a little crazy. … But I had nothing to lose. The way I saw it, I already had cancer, what’s the worst that could happen?”

He has since left his job as a corporate attorney to work for the American Cancer Society, traveling the world to 30 different countries to help fight cancer.

“A lot of other countries don’t have access to the resources we take for granted,” he says. “We were working for poorer countries to get the same access to treatment.”

Adebiyi has scaled back the travel as he trains for another Olympic bid. This time, he’s giving himself two second chances. He’ll try to qualify for the 2016 Summer Games in swimming, with an eye on 2018 in the skeleton.

“For a long time it was about being the best. I had all these trophies from my swimming days. But after cancer, it’s really changed the motivation for me, to share my story and show cancer isn’t the end,” he says. “I want to be able to change that narrative around cancer. Here’s this guy who had who had cancer very young and it wasn’t the end of his life. In fact he took his life to the next level.”

What intrigue there is, wondering what comes after the next comma.

As in, Seun Adebiyi, …

http://www.al.com/news/huntsville/index.ssf/2015/07/seun_adebiyi.html