Q&A with Maria Werner-Wasik, MD, FASTRO

Professor Emerita, Department of Radiation Oncology, TJU

What inspired you to pursue a career at Jefferson?
When I was looking for a job in Philadelphia in 1994, I knew I wanted to become an academic radiation oncologist. The opening at Jefferson looked very interesting, but it was known that the radiation oncology chairman at TJU was stepping down and it wasn’t clear who would be the new chair. It ended up being Dr. Walter (Wally) Curran, Jr., who came from Penn/Fox Chase. He turned out to be instrumental in mentoring me and many of my colleagues, as well as elevating the national standing of the department.

What was one of the most memorable moments in your career?
Within Jefferson, I am proud of having established with my medical physics colleagues a successful Stereotactic Body Radiation Therapy (SBRT) lung cancer program, giving those patients who cannot have surgical resection of an early stage lung cancer a chance at the cure with a non-invasive and very successful treatment.

At the RTOG, I became heavily involved with committee work, mainly becoming Chair of the Publications Committee. Leading Publications in the cooperative group was exciting and not rarely associated with the need to diplomatically and creatively resolve conflicts. So… there was never a dull moment, as my favorite saying goes. My goal being the chair of Publications was to give full co-author credit for patient accrual to clinical trials regardless of where the patients were enrolled, meaning at an academic institution or the institutions outside academia. Being equitable made a difference in clinical trials and in the lives of many people. Later I led another committee, Protocol Operations Committee (POM). We focused on designing initiatives to increase trials enrollment within the NRG Oncology and possibly expand those efforts to the wider NCI stage. The podcast initiative of that committee on the NRG trials, and oncology in general, became a runaway success and I encourage you to listen to those podcasts.

If you could give one piece of advice to someone entering the same field today, what would it be?
My advice would really apply to academic radiation oncology, since that's what I know. I think it is extremely valuable for anybody in academia to associate themselves early on with a large organization. It's very hard to become an outstanding clinical researcher within one institution, unless you are in one of the leading cancer institutions such as MD Anderson Cancer Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City, Washington University, or others.

So, associate yourself with an organization that deals with your focus of interest. For example, for lung cancer that would be the International Association for Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC). Over the last 20 years, it has undergone a tremendous expansion and has increased the number of opportunities for younger researchers or trainees. IASLC holds fantastic meetings throughout the entire globe because it's the only global organization devoted to thoracic malignancies. That's just an example regarding lung, but there are other disease-specific organizations. And obviously, I'm very partial to NRG Oncology, where one can get involved. We have examples of our former residents, trained at Jefferson, who actually became chairs of committees within NRG Oncology or the Principal Investigator of clinical trials. So, it can be done with persistence.

With regard to how to approach a career, one needs to realize very early on what are the criteria for academic promotion. Really, on day seven, once you find out where the bathroom is, find out what are the criteria for promotion. And there are a lot of people who can help you within each organization or institution. It's important because time flies very quickly and you cannot undo it if you have a timed promotion. You better start early. And persist. I think the success in academia belongs to people who persist and who think every day or every other day about their projects and ideas. Talk to people in your institution who treat patients like you, not necessarily from your specialty, but let's say from radiology, pathology, and others. If you want to design a clinical trial, look at the population of patients that is specific for your institution. For example, having excellent pancreatic surgeons, such as we have at Jefferson, results in having a large number of patients with pancreatic cancer, which other institutions may not necessarily match. So, design the clinical trial specific for this patient group and where you know you can achieve success.

How are you spending your retirement years? Any new passions or rediscovered hobbies?
Predictably, I signed up for the hiking club and a birding class. I guess that's the standard thing retirees do, so now I can distinguish more birds than I was able to do before. I heard someone say that when we are young, we do not notice birds. Only when we get older, all of a sudden there are birds everywhere.

Have you stayed involved in your field in any way (mentoring, volunteering, consulting, etc.)?
Thankfully, I was given opportunities to continue some academic work, and that includes chairing an American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) committee for creating national guidelines for the management of the locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer. It is a lot of fun and actually involves a good amount of work. I also participate as an examiner in another university-led mock oral boards for radiation oncology. And trying to finish papers which are still lagging from when I was working at Jefferson. So, I find it very rewarding that I can be involved that way and continue to teach and have input into lung cancer, which is my personal and professional passion.

What’s one thing your colleagues might be surprised to learn about you?
Not everybody knows that I'm a big fan of theater, in particular experimental theater. Every year, for many years in September, I dropped other things I'm supposed to do, and I attend several performances during the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. I recommend it highly to anybody. You will be stretched, your imagination and tolerance for different will expand, and that's always good. I encourage people to sign up for at least one of the 300 performances! Tickets are very reasonably priced, and you will see things you would never suspect you would see.

What legacy do you hope you’ve left in the field?
I hear from my colleagues and trainees that my legacy is mostly in education. I was the residency program director at Jefferson for 10 years, and we had such wonderful groups of residents who went out and, as I said, became chairs of clinical trials and committees but also chairs of the departments of radiation oncology and researchers outstanding in their fields. So, I believe that is my legacy. The residents always said they enjoyed my rotation. I was proud that I was teaching them the basics of radiation and about lung cancer.

If you could host a dinner party with three historical figures (medical or not), who would they be?
First, I would like to include Louis Pasteur, the French biochemist, who first postulated that diseases are not caused by miasma in the air but by specific living organisms such as bacteria. At that time, it was not a popular view and we would find it shocking right now since we know that bacteria exist and cause problems. But he was very persistent and swam against the tide, so to say, until he was finally accepted. His problem was that he was not a physician, so he encountered a lot of resistance for trying to treat patients while not having medical training. He was the inventor of the rabies vaccine and a big proponent of vaccines, for which we should value him highly. He also was fighting a disease causing death of the silkworms, which was causing business decline for silk producers.

The second person would be Katalin Karikó, a Hungarian-American biochemist. She is a genius, and she was persistent. You can hear that persistence, not giving up, and liking change is what I admire in people. She is a recent Nobel Prize winner and was actually on faculty at Penn for many years. She had to leave, being underappreciated, being refused grants, refused publications for her research on mRNA-based vaccine for the corona virus causing COVID, which eventually led to saving us all from the expansion of the COVID pandemic. She later published a book, “Breaking Through: My Life in Science.” Read the book. It is so well written.

And the third has to be Maria Skłodowska Curie (Marie Curie), obviously. For a woman who practiced radiation oncology, it has to be a radiation person. I always joke, "She's Polish, I'm Polish. Her name is Maria, my name is Maria. She has a hyphenated name, I have a hyphenated name. She has two daughters, I have two daughters. She worked with radiation, I worked with radiation, so, here is another person who persisted and was absolutely dedicated to her research and her craft."

I am fortunate that my department of radiation oncology took an initiative to hold an annual lectureship in radiation oncology, with contributions from many of my colleagues, former trainees, and patients, which is really very humbling and for which I'm very appreciative. This year we will hold the inaugural lecture on October 14 during Oncology Grand Rounds time slot, and the speaker will be Dr. David Palma, a Radiation Oncologist at London Health Sciences Centre (LHSC) and an Associate Scientist with London Health Sciences Centre Research Institute (LHSCRI). He will be speaking about lung cancer, and he is an internationally known expert on lung SBRT and a very engaging speaker, so I would encourage you all to join.