Honoring a Delaware Biomedical Leader: Nick Petrelli
Tuesday, October 15, 2024
Posted by: Nicolette Nordmark
Written by Eric Kmiec, Executive Director & Chief Scientific Officer, ChristianaCare Gene Editing Institute
The success of any organization largely depends on hiring the right person at the right time to do the right job. Nicholas Petrelli, M.D., is a shining example of this.
Nick arrived at ChristianaCare’s Helen F. Graham Cancer Center & Research Institute in 2001 and has served uninterrupted as the Bank of America Endowed Medical Director for 23 years. He recently passed the leadership torch to Thomas Schwaab, M.D., Ph.D., and transitioned to a new position as director of the Cawley Center for Translational Cancer Research at the Graham Cancer Center. All of us who know Nick felt he was not really going to retire. He was just going to change lanes.
Over the course of the last six weeks, his friends and colleagues at ChristianaCare in the state and in the nation have spent time reflecting and commenting on his two decades plus of remarkable service. Nick is a surgical oncologist and a good one, but his impact on Delaware reaches far beyond the operating room. The Graham Cancer Center was built in 2002, and at that time Delaware was in the unenviable position of having the highest rate of cancer deaths in the United States, ranking number one. Nick assembled a dedicated team of oncologists, nurses and administrators, and within a decade Delaware dropped out the top 10, and now ranks number 16.
Nick’s philosophy is that community cancer care is built with a strong infrastructure and funded clinical trials. A relevant measure of success centers on the program’s patient accrual rate to clinical trials. During Nick’s tenure, that rate jumped from 6% to 28%. I am proud to say that the Gene Editing Institute will be included in this effort as we develop CRISPR-directed gene editing for solid tumors and plan on having one of the world’s first clinical trials in humans at the Graham Cancer Center. It’s a big deal.
The Graham Cancer Center now has eight full-time genetic counselors who travel the state to offer their services and educate patients. That’s exactly eight more than when Nick arrived. He also established a statewide High-Risk Family Cancer Registry that now has 572,610 individuals registered – by any measure a huge success!
But these achievements were not enough. In 2001, Nick was instrumental in establishing the Delaware Cancer Consortium and the Delaware Cancer advisory Council. Both the governor and the state legislature were moved by Nick’s appeal as he helped to introduce reimbursement for breast, cervical, colorectal, lung and prostate cancer screenings for insured and uninsured individuals. This program has flourished for over two decades and remains unique across the nation. It has been so impactful that in 2008 the state eliminated the disparity in colorectal screening and mortality between white and Black men, which continues to this day.
There is certainly a lot more, but I think you get the picture. Today, style often wins over substance, but not here and not with Nick. That’s not to say that Nick doesn’t have a unique style--sometimes colorful, but always effective. He’s an engaging physician far ahead of the curve in establishing a holistic approach to cancer, including the use of therapy dogs that travel throughout the cancer center with their personal IDs strapped to their collars. Everyone loves these dogs. I was once in Nick’s office when his longtime executive assistant knocked on the door. The door opened and a therapy dog briskly trotted in. Without stopping to glance at me, the dog went over to a file drawer and received a biscuit. Nick didn’t say a word, the dog started chewing, walked out of the room and went back to work.
Nick is courageous and unafraid of innovation. He does not get in the way of progress for personal, territorial or professional reasons. He single-handedly advocated for and led the way for the Crawley Center for Translational Cancer Research, something he counts among his most cherished achievements.
Janice Nevin, M.D., MPH, ChristianaCare president and CEO, tells me that when Nick saw an article in the New York Times about CRISPR-directed gene editing, he went to her and said “I got a guy” -- and soon after the Gene Editing Institute was born. Under their joint leadership, the Institute continues to flourish. He even managed to serve on a thesis committee for Natalia Rivera-Torres, Ph.D., one of our principal investigators and a rising star in the field.
From the operating room to a cancer center with a sterling national reputation and to a world-renowned gene editing institute, we always got his best.
Truly, Nick was the right person for the job.
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