Rick Kittles joined City of Hope as professor and founding director of the Division of Health Equities within the Department of Population Sciences. Kittles’ research focuses on understanding the complex issues surrounding race, genetic ancestry and disease, particularly health disparities among different ethnicities.His work focuses on research into prostate cancer and health disparities among African-Americans, a field of study motivated by his grandfather’s late-stage prostate cancer diagnosis and subsequent death while Kittles was in graduate school.“It was just so shocking and quick how it happened,” he recalled. “I had no idea it was such a big issue in the black community.”
Last week, FDA granted accelerated approval to Replimune Group Inc. for it’s biologic, RP1 (vusolimogene oderparepvec), following the FDA Cellular, Tissue, and Gene Therapies Advisory Committee’s 10:3 vote in support of the biologic in combination with nivolumab for the treatment of advanced melanoma in patients who have progressed on prior anti-PD-1 therapy.
