NCI Presents Top Awards to LSU Health New Orleans Stanley S. Scott Cancer Center

At the recent annual meeting of the NCI Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP), LSU Health New Orleans faculty and staff garnered top honors in three of four awards categories. LSU Health New Orleans’ Minority/Underserved NCORP is called the Gulf South Minority/Underserved Clinical Trials Network NCORP-MU. It is one of 12 Minority/Underserved NCORPs.

Program Manager Eileen Mederos, RN, was one of two recipients of the top Administrator Award.

In the Physician Awards for Accruals category, Scott E. Delacroix, Jr., MD, Director of Urologic Oncology and Associate Professor in the Department of Urology, along with Jessie R. Gills, MD, Assistant Professor of Clinical Urology, won two of the three top Treatment Trial Accrual awards.

Mignonne Morrell, MD, Assistant Professor of Clinical Radiology and Academic Director of Breast Imaging, was one of four recipients of the top Cancer Control Trial Accrual awards.

In 2014, the National Cancer Institute awarded LSU Health New Orleans a $5.6 million grant to build a regional cancer clinical trials network. While open to all cancer patients, the focus of the Gulf South Minority/Underserved NCI Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP) is minority and underserved patients who die from cancer at higher rates than others. This comprehensive cancer-management program created a network of physicians, nurses and researchers from major teaching and private medical institutions in Louisiana and Mississippi to deliver the latest promising investigational treatments for cancer.

In 2019, the National Cancer Institute awarded LSU Health New Orleans a $13.6 million grant to expand its successful statewide clinical trials network with a special emphasis on minority and underserved cancer patients. Principal Investigator Dr. Augusto Ochoa, Director of LSU Health New Orleans Stanley S. Scott Cancer Center, and his team are developing a new entity by combining LSU Health New Orleans’ previously funded Gulf South Minority/Underserved NCI Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP) with Ochsner’s Community NCORP. Primary partners of the new Gulf South Minority/Underserved Clinical Trials Network NCORP are LSU Health New Orleans Stanley S. Scott Cancer Center, LSU Health Shreveport Feist Weiller Cancer Center, Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center and Ochsner Cancer Center.

Acting NCI Director Douglas Lowy, MD, said he really appreciated what the NCORP sites are doing. “Your dedication in conducting trials and referring patients for prevention, screening and treatment are important and are providing high quality care for patients in the community where the vast majority of patients receive their care,” he said.

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