Meet Dr. Francine Foss
January 07, 2022Meet Dr. Francine Foss
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Information
Learn more about internationally recognized clinician and clinical researcher Dr. Francine Foss and her expertise in adult lymphomas and in stem cell allotransplantation.
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To CiteDCA Citation Guide
- 00:00Hello, I'm doctor Francine Foss.
- 00:02I'm a professor of medicine in hematology
- 00:05and oncology here at the Yale Cancer Center.
- 00:08I specialize in stem cell transplantation
- 00:10and the treatment of lymphomas.
- 00:12In particular, I'm the director of the
- 00:14T Cell lymphoma group here at Yale.
- 00:17I've been doing T cell
- 00:18lymphoma for a very long time.
- 00:21I started back at the National Cancer
- 00:23Institute where I was running their
- 00:25program and then I segued into studying
- 00:28some of the novel biologic therapies.
- 00:30And how they apply to T cell lymphoma.
- 00:33We actually have a team of folks
- 00:36here that work with us in our clinic,
- 00:39in the lymphoma clinic,
- 00:40in particular for T cell lymphoma
- 00:42we have a nurse practitioner.
- 00:44We have several practice nurses and
- 00:46we have nurses that are specializing
- 00:48in the skin care for patients
- 00:51with cutaneous lymphoma.
- 00:52We also have social workers,
- 00:54dieticians and other folks that
- 00:56collaborate with our patients
- 00:57and in hope that we actually can
- 01:00optimize care for the whole patient.
- 01:02For the whole person,
- 01:03not just for their disease.
- 01:05T cell lymphomas are rare lymphomas.
- 01:07They're about 10% of all lymphomas
- 01:09in the United States and their
- 01:12treatment of T cell lymphoma has
- 01:14really undergone evolution based
- 01:15on some of the newer research.
- 01:17Typically we would give
- 01:19patients chemotherapy,
- 01:20but what we've learned is that if we
- 01:22add some of these newer biological
- 01:24therapies and targeted agents,
- 01:26patients are actually doing a lot better,
- 01:29so our treatments now are tailored
- 01:31toward identifying specific.
- 01:32Factors in the tumor,
- 01:34such as expression of different
- 01:35proteins or pathways that might
- 01:37direct us to use specific drugs as
- 01:40opposed to general chemotherapy.
- 01:41We are doing a lot of research here at
- 01:44the Yale Cancer Center in T cell lymphoma,
- 01:47and that's multifaceted,
- 01:49including a number of different departments.
- 01:51Here at the medical school,
- 01:53we're looking at novel ways of imaging
- 01:55using different types of pet scanning.
- 01:57For instance,
- 01:58we're also collaborating with our
- 02:00colleagues in pharmacology and
- 02:02in the basic science departments.
- 02:04To develop new therapies,
- 02:05one of the things that I'm interested
- 02:07in are key McKean directed therapies,
- 02:09and in particular a new car T cell
- 02:12therapy that we are now developing.