Kaposi Sarcoma Research at LSU LCMC Health Cancer Center With Dr. Charles Wood and Dr. John West

Nearly 30 years ago, Dr. Charles Wood, the Cancer Crusaders Chair in Advanced Cancer Therapy and Professor with the LSU LCMC Health Cancer Center, visited Zambia for the first time to lead pioneering work investigating HIV transmission from mothers to infants. What he discovered was the extremely rare transmission of Kaposi sarcoma, a cancer commonly found in some people with a weakened immune system and people who have a genetic vulnerability to the virus.

It wasn’t long before Dr. John West, Professor of Interdisciplinary Oncology, joined Dr. Wood in Africa to expand their groundbreaking cancer research. Their research did not come easy to start. Local doctors in Zambia focused on immediate treatment and did not see the value of research. Drs. West and Wood needed to establish local partnerships and gain access to HIV patients as well as build labs and secure grant funding.

“Initially, not only were we faced with the difficulty of speaking to patients, but we also had no lab to conduct further research. That’s when we began to recruit technicians, brought in equipment, and used a small room in the local hospital to establish ourselves,” says Dr. Wood. “It wasn’t long before we realized how important this work was as we gained access to more and more patients. We soon outgrew the one room in the local hospital and built our own lab with our own nurses to provide care to patients. I’m proud that the lab is now being used as a reference lab for the Centers for Disease Control.”

For more than 20 years, one of the laboratory’s largest collaborative research projects involves multiple US research institutions and the University of Zambia, School of Medicine to study HIV/AIDS and Kaposi’s sarcoma transmission, treatment, and prevention. This journey has led to new prevention and management efforts as well as new treatments that help suppress the virus.  

The opportunity to research health disparities opened the door to expand this important research into Tanzania. Going forward, Drs. West and Wood will be building cancer care communities in Zimbabwe and Uganda. These new programs will allow Ph.D. candidates from around the world to visit Africa to understand how these viruses cause diseases with the hope of prevention.