Launching a clinical trial is a lot like leaping from an airplane, says Colette Chaney:
“You’re scared, you’re exhilarated and you’re hoping for a positive outcome.”
The longtime clinical research nurse would know. She’s stood in front of an open door on a plane, steeling herself to skydive. And she’s infused patients with revved-up T cells that had never before been tested in humans.
Since joining Fred Hutch in 2004, Chaney has helped usher advances in immunotherapy from the lab to the clinic and back again. For countless patients enrolled in clinical trials here, she’s been the kind face at medicine’s frontier.
“This work is the epitome of bench-to-bedside research,” said Chaney, now the clinical program operations manager for the Immunotherapy Integrated Research Center. “Our partnership with patients — their trust and willingness to engage with these research efforts — has brought us to where we are today, which is an explosion in novel new agents that show great promise in possibly curing cancer.”
Last week, what Chaney modestly describes as her “small role” in that explosion was honored by March of Dimes Washington. The organization named her its 2018 Nurse of the Year for Research Advancement, which recognizes nurses who use research to guide practice and develop policies.
