Dr. Eduardo Cazap, President of SLACOM and member, INCTR's Special Panel, knew from a young age that he wanted to have some impact on the human condition. In choosing a career path in cancer medicine rather than law, Cazap was swayed by national pride and familial tradition.

In the sphere of cancer medicine, Cazap explains, Argentina was 20 years ahead of its time, conducting basic research in carcinogenesis and developing the first radiotherapy treatments between the 1920s and 1940s. Dr. Eduardo Cazap’s father had been associated with the Roffo Institute, an early cancer institute established by Prof. Angel H. Roffo.

“In those days, at the beginning of our knowledge about radiation, the first radiotherapists came from different specialties,” he says. “My father had trained as a dermatologist. Working with Dr. Roffo, he demonstrated, in 1947, the relationship between lip cancer and pipe smoking.”

Eduardo Cazap was just 15 in 1963, when his father died of renal cancer. In the early 1970s, he pursued his medical training at University of Buenos Aires, completing his residency in internal medicine before seeking additional training in cancer medicine. This was an entirely new approach.

“The way to begin practicing oncology had been to become a medical doctor and then do radiotherapy or chemotherapy,” he recalls. He believes his training in internal medicine made him a better doctor, and he took advantage of the fellowship opportunities that followed at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Cancer Center and with the American Cancer Society. He was invited to become a principal investigator within the Collaborative Cancer Research Treatment Program of the National Cancer Institute in 1985.

Early in his medical career, he participated in a medical team in Argentina, conducting clinical cancer research that was instrumental in defining the role of medical oncology. The chief of the Military Center Hospital in Buenos Aires, Roberto Estevez, had been the first to publish a book on cancer chemotherapy in the Spanish language. Estevez’s two-volume text, published in 1954, reflected the findings of international collaborators who were testing new drugs.

“I was mainly interested in oncology because it was a new specialty,” he says. “A lot of the major questions were still unanswered. This specialty was known in Argentina as “chemotherapy”. We were physicians providing treatment with drugs.”

Cazap believes that to be a good oncologist, one needs to be a good clinician. He founded SLACOM (Latin American-Caribbean Society of Medical Oncology) four years ago to reinforce the idea of cancer specialization and to promote the concept of medical oncology throughout the region. With ASCO (American Society of Clinical Oncology) and ESMO (European Society of Medical Oncology), he has devoted considerable energy to promoting education and transfer of knowledge from country to country. The intent is to act as a global medical colloquium providing doctors with the necessary clinical skills.

With UICC (International Union Against Cancer), Dr. Cazap promotes cooperation and links for oncologists in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa - regions with more dissimilarities than commonalities. The medical oncology situation from region to region often reflects the political situation there, he says. In Africa, for instance, it’s difficult to identify leadership. And forget the volume hotel discount when inviting cancer specialists from the United Arab Emirates - there are only five!

“You have countries with good radiotherapy units and some with none,” Cazap says. “It’s difficult to imagine ways in which physicians can treat patients with not even one of the main tools of the trade.”

In July 2006, Dr. Cazap was designated a member of UICC’s board of directors. His primary responsibility will be attracting new membership among organizations and individuals worldwide.

“The idea is to develop or promote regional blocks that encourage interaction among the people of that region,” he says, “so that they have a voice in discussions about cancer control in their own part of the world.”



Marcia Landskroener for INCTR