2022 is only days away and this Friday, Channel 7 will bring you the ball drop from Electric Tower and it is something we couldn’t do without our broadcast sponsor Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. They have so much to be excited for in the new year and Emily Lampa spoke with their new deputy director about Roswell’s future and he is a local guy.
Dr. Renier Brentjens, Roswell Park’s deputy director says for its size it’s remarkable all the facilities and opportunity that is here at Roswell Park and I can honestly say that my research program at Sloan Kettering verses what I can do here is at the very least equal if not just much more accessible here.
What are his goals for working with Roswell Park? Dr. Brentjens says what he has developed over two decades and helped develop for over two decades at Sloan Kettering was this concept that we can re-engineer your immune system, your immune cells that usually fight bacteria and viruses. He says we can re-engineer them in the laboratory to now recognize tumor cells and kill tumor cells. Dr. Brentjens says there are now a bunch of FDA approved products but really I think we are just scratching the surface of the potential of this therapy and coming here to Buffalo to Roswell Park the goal is to provide that type of novel and promising therapy to the people of Western New York and then we want to move forward so that the people of New York State, the people of Eastern United States, the people of United States and people worldwide will start coming to Roswell Park as a destination center for top line therapy. He says the great things about my discussions with Dr. Candice Johnson, the CEO and president is she is absolutely right on board and I told her the first day I came here to look at Roswell Park, if you are going to bring me here that’s what you are going to bring me here to turn Roswell Park into a national and internationally recognized center for next stage immunotherapy and I told you we have everything here to make that happen.
