This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, July 25, 2011 - Dr. Jerry Jaboin, a Washington University researcher and clinical physician, said he became a scientist because "it's fun, it's discovery." What he's trying to discover is deadly serious: better treatments for brain tumors.
At age 37, Jaboin calls himself a "junior scientist." He has just begun his scientific career in earnest and he's looking to make his mark. He doesn't know exactly where that will be, but he says he's sure it's going to have something to do with eradicating brain tumors.
Jaboin's focus is on the delivery of better and faster therapeutic agents to tumors, particularly those that do not respond to any current remedies.
"I'm working to treat things that have no further treatment," Jaboin says matter-of-factly. He smiles often as he talks, but he remains intense; he knows he has his work cut out for him.
No one knows what causes the 35,000 new primary brain tumors diagnosed in adults in the U.S. each year. Both cancerous and benign brain tumors can be life-threatening. Surgery is usually the first option to remove a tumor, but location sometimes precludes surgery. In those cases, chemotherapy and radiation are used to kill or shrink the tumor. Those therapies can also be used after surgery to kill remaining cancer cells. But radiation and chemotherapy can damage healthy cells.
That's where the powerful new area of exploration that Jaboin is working on, nanoparticles, comes in. It makes drug delivery to tumors more accurate and effective, targeting diseased cells while leaving healthy cells untouched and unharmed.
Engineering Good Viruses
Jaboin and his colleagues are researching an unlikely nanoparticle as a brain tumor treatment: viruses. These microbes usually attack the body and make it sick. But a virus' size and attack qualities make it an ideal tool to search out and destroy cancer cells. Jaboin is currently working with a colleague, a virus expert, to reengineer viruses into microscopic tumor warriors.
"The payload is a drug to knock down the tumor," Jaboin said.
The watchword is "safety," Jaboin says, so they already have two FDA-approved viruses they are modifying for drug delivery. They hope to begin clinical trials in two or three years. Their test subjects are mice that have, themselves, been modified; they have been implanted with tumors. The mice are treated and evaluated as the tumors grow. But the treatment is not yet a cure, and the tumors continue to grow. To ensure that the mice do not suffer, they are "sacrificed" when the tumors become large enough to cause discomfort.
At first, Jaboin found ending the experiment difficult.
"I loved my mice," Jaboin said, laughing at the memory. "The first day I had to kill my mouse, I cried. I couldn't kill him. Someone else had to handle the sacrifice. I learned never to develop that kind of attachment again.
"We respect the mice, so we do not let them suffer. They are helping us do things we couldn't do in humans."
Dr. Daniel J. Ferraro, a radiation oncology resident physician who works with Jaboin, says those feelings are characteristic of Jaboin's approach. "No one likes to kill mice, but he's sensitive to things like that. He is one of the kindest physicians I've met.
"He's very intelligent, creative and very motivated," Ferraro said. "He makes everyone else want to be on the top of their game and he's fun to work with."
Ferraro says their work is important because today's treatments can be improved, patients can benefit immediately from clinical trials, and they are laying the groundwork for future diagnoses.
"It's a long-term venture; we know that when we start," Ferraro said. "But if we don't do it now, new drugs won't be on the shelves in 10 or 20 years.
Awesome Work
Science is setting new standards of care, Jaboin says. But research has its challenges. Most individuals are full-fledged doctors by their 30th birthdays, while researchers may be in their mid-40s before they "know where dinner is coming from." The average age, for researchers to get their first funded project Jaboin says, is 43 -- and it's becoming harder to get grants. He counts himself among the lucky because he can rely on his clinical work for support. The dual roles also permit him to bridge the gap between the laboratory and patient care.
"I have the best of both worlds," he said.
"Science is problem solving creatively," he added. "It puts you in close contact with the entire giving community. I interact with people at all levels and the give and take makes you feel like you are part of a family."
He thinks that's "awesome." In fact, Jaboin finds a lot of things "awesome." Like his colleagues. And keeping office hours at Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Christian Hospital.
"My patient interaction is awesome," Jaboin said. "Helping them figure out problems, maybe even how they want to die, is gratifying. I can't imagine not having patient care. I couldn't choose" between science and clinical.
The American Dream
Jerry Jeff Jaboin, the oldest child of Haitian immigrants Olyn P. Jaboin and Marie France Jaboin, was the first Jaboin born in America. He was named in honor of one of his mother's favorite soap opera stars, Jeremy Hunter, who appeared on "All My Children."
In the early '70s, his father followed an aunt to Boston, seeking the American dream like many who came before and after him. His mother and her family arrived in the same area around the same time, but under much different circumstances. Her father, a jeweler, spirited his family out of Haiti under threat of death from the Tonton Macoutes, President Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier's paramilitary police. The two met and married in Boston and had two children, Jerry, and a daughter, Natacha (Kerelezja), who became a social worker.
His mother worked full time while raising two children and pursuing a bachelor's degree in nursing. His father, without a formal college education, succeeded in getting a U.S. patent in his name for helping develop a chemical product.
Before the family moved to a Connecticut suburb, Jerry Jaboin's early years were spent living with his family and several other immigrant relatives in a three-family flat in north Boston.
"Someone was always coming over" from Haiti, Jaboin said. "I loved it."
One of the newcomers was Jaboin's uncle, Webster Jaboin, who arrived just in time to attend his nephew and godson's baptismal. "Uncle Bob" became his teacher.
"He started me reading at 3," Jaboin recalled. "I could read Bible passages and I had a vocabulary out of the dictionary; I'd use words like posterior."
Webster Jaboin, a nurse now working as a nurse case manager, said he remembered why the reading lessons started.
"He fascinated us," he said. "He was very inquisitive and very attentive. Reading was one of the areas he learned very quickly; all you had to do was get him to focus for a while."
But Webster Jaboin deflected any credit.
"The credit belongs to his parents," he said. "In our family, education is stressed as being the sine qua non to a better life. Jerry's parents lovingly brought the point across."
Jaboin has carried on his family's teaching tradition, mentoring students with an unabashed agenda.
"You can help shape their future," Jaboin said. "I want to help shape their worldview."
Jaboin says he feels a particular obligation to help African Americans succeed.
"The deficit is not intelligence or ability, it's access," Jaboin said. "I feel a responsibility to help enrich and bring more people (into medicine) who are qualified. My uncle (Bob) was going to be a doctor, but he didn't have the opportunity. He helped me to do it, and I want to help others."
An Investment in Success
Jerry Jaboin was a very quiet but ebullient child who smiled a lot, just as he does now, his uncle said. And he made it known that he wanted to be a doctor.
"I thought his mind would change; he was just a kid," Webster Jaboin said. "But he is amazing. Jerry is steadfast until what he wants becomes reality."
Jaboin is now assistant professor in radiation oncology at Washington University. His specialties are radiation oncology and intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT). He joined Washington University School of Medicine faculty last July after serving a residency in radiation oncology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn.
He received a B.S. from Central Connecticut State University in New Britain in 1996. (He almost went to West Point after being recommended by two Republican congressmen). He subsequently earned his medical degree and a Ph.D. in genetics and human genetics from Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C.
His honors include recognition awards from Vanderbilt in 2007 and 2008, and he was named the American Board of Radiology Holman Pathway Fellow from 2006 through 2010. He has contributed to numerous publications and abstracts on cancer.
Jaboin is now married with children and living in Ladue. His wife, Gauri, a native of Bombay, India, is a psychologist who is now staying home with their two children, 3 1/2-year-old Ayanna and 2-month-old Jaya. By the time she's four, Jaboin plans to have Ayanna taking singing and piano lessons.
"That's a must," Jaboin said.
She'll be following in her father's footsteps. Jaboin took piano lessons from the time he was 6 years old through his first year in college. It got him his first job. He played Broadway show tunes and Scott Joplin -- "whatever the residents liked" -- at a nursing home.
Jaboin will soon be visiting Haiti, a trip that was postponed because of Jaya's birth, for the first time since he was a child. He's going to see how he can help the continuing recovery from last year's earthquake.
"We have a doctor in the family," Webster Jaboin said proudly. "He's something special."
"My whole family feels invested in my success," Jaboin conceded.
Gloria Ross is a free lance writer in St. Louis.