Transcription:

Dr. Selwyn Vickers: Dr. Sleckman, I want to welcome you to The Checkup. It's our podcast that introduces a number of opportunities and events to our faculty and our staff at the Medical School at the University of Alabama Birmingham. So welcome Barry. We're glad you're here.

Dr. Sleckman: Thank you. I'm thrilled to be here.

Host: So, this will be short, but it'll give us some chance maybe to get a bit of a background of your journey. But I'll first say Dr. Sleckman is an outstanding physician scientist who's most recently been selected as the Director of the O'Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center and the holder of the Evalina Spencer Chair in cancer care. We're excited to have him now on board to be our leader of our Cancer Center. And this podcast is one of the welcoming events that we planned for it. Barry, can you tell me about your journey to both becoming a physician and then second of a physician scientist?

Dr. Sleckman: Yeah, well, my journey is a, it's an unusual one. And I won't take you through the whole journey, but I'll cut to the part that really had the greatest influence. I grew up in Summit New Jersey and a very good friend of mine, in the town was a general surgeon and I very much appreciated and admired what he did. And decided that I wanted to go to medical school and then become a surgeon and return to Summit and take over his practice. So that was my goal. So I went off to Lafayette College to do that. And as a sophomore I thought, well, you know, I probably ought to do some research because people who want to go to medical school, should do research. I really didn't have any innate interest in it at the time. And I started working with the analytical chemists and for me that was transformative. The thrill of being able to work on something in the lab and figure out something that was unknown that people may actually be able to use to help them in their lives, to me was incredibly gratifying. And so really at that point, I changed trajectory dramatically from wanting to go to medical school and have primarily a clinical practice, to wanting to go to medical school. And doing an MD PhD and including research as a major component of my career.

Host: Well that's a really powerful story. It's even more pronounced that it was a surgeon who helped sort of push you towards the direction of medicine and also your discovery of a passion for research. So tell me, what does your research focus on, and how does it relate to sort of the future of our opportunities for care in cancer patients?

Dr. Sleckman: Well, so my research when I started, my PhD was in immunology, again because of an experience I had in college with a college professor who was with teaching an immunology course, not knowing an immunology. She simply got the textbook and stayed one chapter ahead of all of us. And at the time I found immunology to be very exciting. And so when I went to medical school, did a PhD in immunology and then through my training, did postdoctoral work in molecular immunology. Really started out as a developmental immunologist. But you know, as science is, it's all driven by serendipity. You know, we were doing some experiments looking at how genes are assembled and developing immune cells. And I realized that our findings really had more important implications for how the DNA breaks that are generated during that assembly process are repaired. And over the last 15 years, the lab has focused entirely on using this biological process as a model for understanding how DNA double strand breaks are repaired. And genome stability is maintained, which of course is a big, big issue in the generation. And even more so the evolution of cancer

Host: That's outstanding and that's exciting to hear about what the impact of that might be in the future on our patients and translation into care paradigms. Barry, you've, you've been at a number of institutions and certainly have had, a chance to serve and lead at those institutions. And you also had options to look at leadership as it related to cancer centers. What is it about the UAB community that made you, was attractive to you in this role? And what was the sort of the factors that allowed you to assume the leadership in this role?

Dr. Sleckman: Yeah, I think the thing that's the most exciting for me about UAB and the cancer center here, which is similar to some cancer centers at other institutions is, and you may be surprised to hear this, the physical layout of the campus, the fact that the medical school sits geographically connected to a campus that has a incredibly diverse expertise in areas which are now essential to the cancer mission. So when Cancer Center started, you know, 40 years ago was all about basic science. It was a supportive basic science. But now the mandate is that we're involved in basic science, population science, community outreach and engagement, health policy, clinical care, translation. So, you know, to be at a Cancer Center, at a top medical school that's embedded in a University that brings with it a lot of expertise in areas like communications, allied health law, all of these things, engineering of course, have an incredible impact on the cancer mission. And really will allow us over the next five years to generate some really innovative programs that will help us achieve the goals of the mission.

Host: Great. So what's your first four to six weeks been like in this role? What have you discovered and what things have you encountered?

Dr. Sleckman: Well, yeah, what have I discovered? You know, for me, there's only one formula to understanding the assets, if you will, of an institution and what I call the hidden treasures, which is to meet people and talk to them. So for the last six weeks, I have met and talked to countless numbers of people to understand what they're working on, what they're thinking about, you know, what is their, you know, greatest innovative desire. And also to kind of introduce them to the notion that if they're not working on cancer, they really are. You know, that's, I think a big part of this job, which is to not just support those people who are working in the cancer mission, but to show those people who currently are not working in the cancer mission, how relevant what they're doing is to that mission. So at a professional level, that's been the last six weeks, at a personal level, I've just been exploring the town, getting to know all the great assets in the town, which I enjoy quite a bit.

Host: Great. Specifically as you've taken a sort of the really survey or the landscape and know what lies ahead, what are your goals for the O'Neill Comprehensive Cancer Center?

Dr. Sleckman: You know, my goals are simple. It's a simple goal, do great things. It was the thing that my first department chair told me when I was an assistant professor and I asked him, what it is that I needed to do, expecting full well that he would give me a list of the numbers of papers and grants that I needed to write in order to be successful. And he looked back and he said, just do great things. So my job is to help people in this institution do great things. And I know that that may, at face value sound like, I haven't thought about it a lot, but I have thought about it a lot. And to me that's part of going around and talking to people and listening to what they're doing and then thinking about how we could take what they're doing to even a greater level. And I think that's really the job of a director of a matrix Cancer Center. Matrix Cancer Centers don't create programs. They take great programs and things that are created by faculty and they do things that enable them to reach to higher levels and to integrate, to get to higher levels.

Host: I fully agree. If you were to say some of the early tactics and strategies that will be important to doing that, what do you see as some of the short term goals you'd like us to know that we need to get accomplished?

Dr. Sleckman: I think a very important short term goal is to come up with a detailed granular, serious and what I call sober strategic plan. So that is to now take all this data I've collected for the last six weeks and to get groups of people together to see how we get some of these new initiatives off the Launchpad. Because that is, at the end of the day, the hardest thing. It's very easy for people to sit in a room together and come up with some great ideas and great plans. But the next step, which is once you leave the room, is to come up with a pathway to really execute on those plans and develop a new program. That's the hard part. So I think the next six months, a lot of it will be, you know, getting groups of people together around some of these unique opportunities.

Host: Barry, in the bigger scope of things, as we've often talked, this cancer center has a huge role in this State and in the Southeast. How can we positively affect, even more lives in Alabama as it relates to cancer care and discovery?

Dr. Sleckman: I think, you know, the way we do it, I just actually met with the community board that's having lunch here now and I told them something that I think is quite relevant to your question. I said, you know, this is a great institution. There's a lot of great work going on here, great science, great community outreach, engagement, great clinical work. But without all of you to tell us how we can transport all of that work out into the community, then there's a lot lost for all of that effort. And so I think really what will become key in the next 10 years will be to do things to get the word out to the community. That wherever you are in this state, if you have cancer, the best place to come would be at the O'Neill Comprehensive Cancer Center. And the best indication of the success of that venture in 10 years is whether O'Neill becomes the brand name for the best cancer care in the State of Alabama.

Host: Excellent. Outstanding. We look forward to having that be the case. Barry, just let's end on maybe a personal note, I know you have two kids. Can you tell us a little bit about them and maybe what some of the things you like to do for fun?

Dr. Sleckman: Well, yeah, I do have two children. My son actually yesterday just texted me that he got 96 percentile on the MCAT, so it looks like, when my daughter who's at University of Georgia as a sophomore also wants to go to medical school. So as I say, it looks like I'll be in medical school for a long, long time. But you know, there's nothing like having your kids find their way in life. There's a sense of security from that and a sense of calm and peace that no matter how crazy your life is when their lives are set, you're okay. So, I really am proud of the two of them. They've done very well, and also maintained a good kind of life work balance. As far as for me, you know, I love to cook, I love to play golf, I love to bike. I'm rethinking that now. But, you know, I love to do all the things that I can do very easily in this city. So I'm having a great time and I'm working my way one micro-brewery at a time through all of the micro-breweries. It's absolutely phenomenal.

Host: Well, you have a town that's really great for food, for golfing. We're still growing in the biking space, but golfing and cooking and food, you have the town for that. We're glad you're here and excited about what you bring as a leader and really appreciate you for appearing and coming on to The Checkup. Thank you again, and we look forward to checking in later.

Dr. Sleckman: All right. Thank you.

Host: Thank you.