PROFILES IN RESEARCH EXCELLENCE, 2: Heidi Gray, M.D.

 

Linda at Welburn gourd farm

She was good at gourding

She was even better at quilting

 

Remember back on  June 14^th of last year when I wrote about “chemo-brain”?  Actually I was writing about CIPN – chemotherapy-induced peripheral neuropathy, but in two Comments to that blog I introduced   CICI – chemotherapy induced cognitive impairment – chemo-brain.  Linda didn’t have it, thank God, except perhaps in her last few weeks when she wasn’t herself.  However, some women do suffer from  it, and for some of them it last a lifetime.  Thank goodness then for Heidi Gray, M.D.  Dr. Gray is one of our (MRC – Marsha Rivkin Center) grantees for 2012.  She is going to do something about chemo-brain.

What is she going to do, you might legitimately ask?  Well, I don’t rightly know.  Her MRC citation states that she “will examine the ability of a 7-week cognitive rehabilitation intervention to improve memory and thinking abilities in ovarian cancer survivors.”  Additionally, she will “measure changes in brain activity patterns from the treatment using neuroimaging”.

The reason I don’t rightly know is that nowhere can I  find what is meant  by “intervention”, precisely.  It isn’t the administration of drug; that much is certain.  Maybe if I had a proper education the matter would be clear, but I’m just a dumb geologist.  When a geologist stages an “intervention” he usually is breaking up a fight between two of his graduate students over which one gets the last  beer.

But I don’t need to know – Dr. Gray obviously is a smart cookie (actually, you probably shouldn’t refer to cancer scientists as “cookies), as is amply demonstrated  by the fact that she has been  involved in over 20 original research papers in the last five years. The work is innovative (she got an MRC grant didn’t she?), and, given her record, will be well done. She is on the faculty of the U.W. medical school.  She got her M.D. degree at UCLA in 1997.  She is fortunate enough to work with Dr. Elizabeth Swisher, who collaborates with my group at the Hutch. 

And, - I must say it – she looks like she is 25 years old.  Studying medicine and biochemistry apparently imparts a certain ability to resist time – at least to women.