Follow The Brand Podcast with Host Grant McGaugh

Decoded in the Deep: How a Marine Biologist Is Rewriting the Future of Cancer

• Grant McGaugh CEO 5 STAR BDM

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Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Follow The Brand! We hope you enjoyed learning about the latest marketing trends and strategies in Personal Branding, Business and Career Development, Financial Empowerment, Technology Innovation, and Executive Presence. To keep up with the latest insights and updates from us, be sure to follow us at 5starbdm.com. See you next time on Follow The Brand!

Speaker 1:

Welcome everybody to the Follow Brand Podcast. This is your host, grant McGaugh. We're going to keep it right here in South Florida, in Broward County, at Memorial Healthcare System. Kyle Roebuck here Now. I ran into this gentleman through the HIMSS organization. I'm a big HIMSS fan, program chair for HIMSS for a very long time, and I found his story to be intriguing and I've done a lot of work in the cancer world. And we got to talking. He said hey, grant, I'm doing a lot in genetics, I'm doing precision medicine, I'm doing things that help cancer treatment get better, and I want to tell my story. And I went well, let's hear your story then, kyle, let's talk about this. First, introduce yourself.

Speaker 2:

Hi everyone. My name is Kyle Roebuck. I am a molecular pathology technologist with Memorial Healthcare System and I got my start in research, interestingly enough, in marine biology. So I tell people that I'm a marine biologist turned health care professional. So that's the short story and the long story could be for another day.

Speaker 1:

Well, you are a Florida. You're Florida born, I would say. I mean literally born in the same system in which you work with. Now, was that planned? Tell us a little bit about your background.

Speaker 2:

By no means was it planned. On a rainy day in August in 1991, I was born at Memorial Regional Hospital. Back then it was called Memorial Hospital, so I'm a South Florida native through and through, grew up in Pembroke Pines, went to Florida State University in Tallahassee and then from there I went and did my master's, my graduate research at Nova Southeastern University, which another full circle moment is. Now I'm also teaching there as an adjunct professor. So you can say that full circle moments have pervaded my life through and through. So I'm very excited about those two.

Speaker 1:

I see you're a professor now at NOVA, you're doing some work at Miami College and obviously you do a lot of work. I mean, what is driving your passion in this world? Most people you just said it is rolled off your tongue when you're talking about a medical, biological pathology. I mean that's a lot. That's a lot of letters there. Tell us exactly what that is.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So what we do nowadays in precision medicine and specifically in oncology, we're moving away from the typical naming cancers and naming tumors by the site of origin and we're moving towards identifying them by mutational profiles and what mutations are in that patient's tumor and finding, finding targetable treatments, precision treatments that are actually going after those, those mutations themselves, instead of just a broad spectrum chemotherapy that you've been getting for, you know, decades for now, you know up until now. So that's an interesting part of the field and how we're developing new therapies, you know over time, and we're also targeting specific mutations in the patient's tumor instead of just treating everyone as a one size fits all type of approach.

Speaker 1:

I think that's important. And what you just said as far as therapies, medications, I mean just having cancer itself and telling somebody they have cancer is tough and then if you have more of a generic approach, you really don't know how that medication or that therapy or that treatment is going to behave. You know for that particular individual, so kind of trial and error. So when I hear what you're saying you were going more of a precise treatment path, that means you're honing in and taking out all the unknowns, trying to get into a known element and try to get to a better result. Have you seen that to be the case now that you're in this field and you're seeing the end results of a lot of these cases?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean you could have two different tumors that are from the same site of origin, aka the lung, the brain, pancreas but the mutational profiles could be completely different. And so, in order to have that personalized approach, you have to do the biomarker testing and once you have those biomarkers profiled, you can find which eligible therapies are available for that patient. And so it really is a highly personalized approach. That is, it's producing side effects that you get with traditional chemotherapies and eventually being more effective than those therapies.

Speaker 1:

This is important. Now, when you say biomarkers, are you talking about the individual's biomarker or is that or something specific in the patient that is indicative of?

Speaker 2:

disease or of progression of disease, things along those lines. But specifically in oncology we talk about biomarkers, as what are the drivers of tumor genesis or what's deriving the formation of that tumor? And those are the types of mutations that you're trying to target and trying to investigate to find out what would be the most efficacious and advantageous treatment to basically combat that tumorigenesis or the formation of that tumor. And I'm talking specifically for solid tumors in cancer. Generically speaking, tumors or cancer is divided up into two groups. The solid tumors in cancer. Generically speaking, tumors or cancer is divided up into two groups the solid tumors and the blood cancers, which are the leukemias, the lymphomas, the myelomas. Those are also targetable, but that's a different realm in terms of biomedical research and and testing and that sort.

Speaker 1:

As a. You're a pathologist. I want to help my audience understand. You know there's a. You know the cancer doctor and an oncologist. You are the pathologist. How do you work together?

Speaker 2:

So I'm not a pathologist. A pathologist is an MD, is a trained doctor. So I'm a molecular pathology technologist and what I do is I perform the testing. I perform the testing from the tissue all the way up until there's data that is informative for the oncologist to use in guiding their treatment, their treatment regimen. So we work intimately with the pathologists, who in turn work with the oncologists, which are the actual treating physicians that are dealing with patients day in and day out. So that's the main distinction there.

Speaker 1:

That's a major distinction. So we're like, when you go in and I've seen this happen you go in, you get a biopsy, which is a piece of tissue, right, they take that biopsy and then they take it through different testing. So when they take it through different testing, is that your world? You're actually looking at that tissue and trying to figure out what's going on.

Speaker 2:

That's exactly right. So normally a person has a biopsy or a surgery and a piece of tissue is taken out of them, and traditionally it's fixed in a chemical called formalin, which stabilizes it, what we call histologically, which is it preserves the molecular structure of all of the internal components of that tissue. And then afterwards, after it's fixed in that chemical, it's embedded in what's called paraffin, paraffin wax, and that combination of the formalin fixation and the paraffin embedding is what we call. It is called FFPE. That's what the FFPE stands for and that's traditionally what's used nowadays to do the diagnostics. And so that's essentially your starting tissue that you begin the process of discovering these biomarkers.

Speaker 1:

This is interesting. Now I want to ask because you're at this juncture intersection of health care and technology because I met you at HIMSS HIMSS is the Health Informatics Systems Society. Now I'm curious as to how you're applying technology. Are you're applying, you know, known AI algorithms? Are you doing you know scanning imaging? Tell us how you utilize technology in your trade.

Speaker 2:

So one particular method to discover these biomarkers is called next-generation sequencing and that's a method to scan essentially a vast majority of biomarkers within a tumor. In this, if we give this example in oncology, to find all of the specific nucleotide bases that are in a sequence that make up that tumor and To find those mutations, we have to align those sequences to what's called a reference genome, which is a grouping of human genomes that have been kind of the gold standard of what we use as comparison to basically call mutations in that patient's tumor. And so there's a lot of technological requirements to do that, a lot of algorithms, a lot of information technology type solutions that are needed to do that computational generation of that data. So that's really the demand for information technology and use of algorithms and importing that data into patient charts and into EHRs.

Speaker 1:

This is important information. So you're taking massive amounts of data, of information that you have in various databases to, I guess, cross-reference, trying to get to a particular understanding of what you have in front of you as far as this tissue, whatever its molecular regeneration, is doing to kind of isolate the cancer and what it is. A lot of people and I would like you to tell our audience what exactly is cancer. I mean, they understand it's a different cellular generation, but it's a type of disease that is different from other things that are happening that causes you to do this kind of work. Tell us more about what cancer is and how, when you have all this data and this information, what you're able to then instruct the oncologist or pathologist on.

Speaker 2:

So when you break it down into the simplest terms, cancer is really just uncontrolled cellular division. So normally in our normal cells they go through a series of checkpoints as they get ready to divide and they grow and they divide again under a process called mitosis. In cancerous cells the instructions to go through those processes are a little bit damaged and so the cells don't normally go through or don't go through those processes checked in a series of checkpoints. They're bypassing those checkpoints, they're going faster, they're multiplying unregulated and unchecked and that's what causes the eventual formation of a tumor, which is just a bunch of cells growing in one area that form an actual mass. So that's really what cancer is. It's uncontrolled cell division and cells that kind of have gone rogue compared to the cells that are essentially behaving normally.

Speaker 1:

This is interesting, but we don't know what causes that to happen. What causes that mutation? Is that what you say? It's in the instructions at the cellular level. Do we have information about that? One group is called oncogenes and then another group is called tumor suppressor genes.

Speaker 2:

So tumor suppressor genes are there and their main responsibility is to inhibit uncontrolled cell division. And so in those tumor suppressor genes, if those are mutated, they are not doing their job to suppress tumor formation. And conversely, in oncogenes, those are genes that induce cellular proliferation and cellular division. So by the absence of mutations in oncogenes and by the presence of mutations in tumor suppressor genes, the combination of those or them working by themselves, will lead to the production of a tumor.

Speaker 1:

And then do you take this information. Once you've done your work and you've done your research, then you sit down with the oncologist or the pathologist. This is the work that I'm presenting to you. Is that what happens, or is it different?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so that data? Is that what happens or is it different? Yeah, so that's that data is is provided to a pathologist and that data is analyzed by that pathologist and they determine what is relevant for that tumor type and so that once that data report is completed, that gets sent to the oncologist and then that oncologist digests that information with all the other information that they're getting and decides on a treatment regimen from that data.

Speaker 1:

This is interesting. Now you said you're a professor, and you're a professor at two institutions, at NOVA and also Miami Dade College. Are you teaching this type of information and technology and and or is it something totally different?

Speaker 2:

I'm teaching this in a much more rudimentary sense, um undergraduate and graduate level um, not specifically cancer related, but um more of a a generic genomics and genome biology sense Um, but the the principles and the ideas and the concepts are similar. It's just on a much more undergraduate and graduate level, not as high level as what I'm speaking about now and what I do on a day-to-day basis in the lab.

Speaker 1:

Yes, exactly Now, genomics, genomics. There's different distinctions, right as we get into now genomics and genomics genomics. There's different distinctions, right as we get into now genomics and genomics is a whole nother animal because it affects so many different things. And how do you look at genomics? And if you had to give a definition like hey, professor roebuck, what is genomics?

Speaker 2:

well, it's really the study of a genome, of an organism in its broadest sense, and that's where I came from research actually on marine invertebrates and organisms in the ocean that are really rudimentary and preliminary study organisms for things that are happening in cancer and a lot of, for example, a lot of cancer drugs are isolates from sponges or are derivatives of secondary metabolites of sponges that are actually found in the ocean. So that was my my first work about a decade ago, but then it's led me here to to do the work on actual patients that have been diagnosed with cancer and has offered me the ability to give back so much more of my education and my background to help human health in a much greater sense. So that's kind of the journey I've a little bit longer of a, of an explanation of the journey I've been on.

Speaker 1:

No, this is interesting. You just told me that you are curing cancer from the ocean and beings in the ocean. Is that what I heard?

Speaker 2:

Yes, yeah. So most people, a lot of people, are surprised at the fact that a lot of the cancer drugs, a vast majority of the cancer drugs, have been modeled or have been derived or have been synthetically made based off of derivatives of sponges and other organisms in the ocean, and that's, that's another, just another reason why we need to protect the oceans, but that's another, another talk in and of itself, another talk in and of itself. But, yeah, that's that's again. That's that's part of my story and how I've I've moved as a move from a marine biologist turned to healthcare professional.

Speaker 1:

Now, as you go through that story, I want you to think about this you know, starting out and getting your undergrad and then going through grad school, now being out in the world actually doing this work, teaching this work, what is the most interesting thing? That just really kind of mind blows you about the work that you do?

Speaker 2:

Really, I think it's just the fast-paced nature of how many things are developing on a day-to-day basis, what things are being discovered on a day-to-day basis, what things are being discovered on a day-to-day basis. That's what, that's what got me so interested in science in the first place. It's just how much technology is changing, how much we're finding out day-to-day new developments, new, new discoveries, and that's, to me, is the most exciting part of science in general. And then, even more so, biology, and if you get really granular in terms of what I do today is cancer biology.

Speaker 1:

You've intrigued me. I mean I've learned something big. For me it's a big thing that we're getting cancer treatments from microorganisms or organisms in the ocean that we find that then can then combat this mutation and really your body is kind of fighting itself is what I'm hearing in cancer, and I've heard that there's certain other causes. People are looking at diet could be a cause. There's some external forces that could be getting in there and creating these types of things. Or maybe your immune system is just not as strong to withstand some of these activities that are going on at the cellular level. I mean, this sounds to be to solve for this problem that's occurring within a person. I find that fascinating.

Speaker 2:

It is. It really is fascinating about all of the biomedical research that's going into cancer itself and finding information about all the factors that could go into the production of a tumor inside your body and what, what. It also makes you appreciate how many things have to go right, because in the, in an instant, things can go wrong, and so it really it. It makes me, it reminds me, how many things have to go right, and and and. It gives me a much greater appreciation for science, for biology, for what I've done in the past, what I'm doing now, and just the benefits that are being imparted onto human health.

Speaker 1:

Now you've been invited on many stages. People want to hear from you and talk to you about your research right and what you're doing. Why are you, kyle Roebuck, being asked to come onto these stages and what exactly is the kind of knowledge that you're imparting?

Speaker 2:

I think it's my diverse background, the different things that I've been lucky enough to be a part of and to experience and really learn. I think that multidisciplinary and that diverse background is a huge attribute for myself and my career and it's given me perspective and it's allowed me to learn things that most other people haven't learned, that are maybe in the clinic and in healthcare, because I've come from research and now I'm in the clinic and I'm doing clinical stuff. So I think that that diversity and that multidisciplinary background is is very beneficial for my, for myself and my career, and I think it's also become beneficial to you know my current role and at at you know my current day job, and then also for my, my professor. You know my, my, my, my teaching responsibilities as well.

Speaker 1:

I tell you you've sold me on your credibility and your authenticity when you marry those teams together that you know you, when you say something in this realm it rings true. People like huh, you know if kyle? I'm sure kyle knows what he's talking about because he's done the research. You know you always like that he's not going to just throw some ideas out there. Like you know, I've done the research, I've seen the trials. I know what happens on the before, the during and the after. I want to ask you this In five years, let's say we fast forward five years it's the year 2030. What is Kyle Roebuck doing?

Speaker 2:

I think that's the exciting part is the not knowing, because so much is changing and so much has changed in my life in the last three and a half four years and I think that that the industry that I'm working in is is is exponentially changing, day after day and year after year, so I don't really know where my career is going to take me. I'm just excited for the ride.

Speaker 1:

Well, let's take that for a ride just a little bit further. I want to unpack that just a little bit. I want to ask you this If you could make a difference in what you're doing in cancer treatment, money wasn't an object. Nothing was an obstacle in your way. Let's just say, what would that be?

Speaker 2:

your way. Let's just say, what would that be? I think, in the most basic sense, I would just like to get cancer patients treated faster and whether it be you know diagnosed faster. We talk a lot about screening initiatives nowadays. We talk about education, we talk about advocacy. All of those things will help bring diagnostics of cancer up to the forefront and expedite those, so that you are not diagnosing people in late stage cancer, You're not diagnosing metastatic disease. You can help save more lives because you're getting those people in the appropriate treatments faster and that, I think, is is the most ambitious and and and worthwhile goal that we can, that we can go for right now and we can strive to, to, to, you know, work towards.

Speaker 1:

I like that. I think that's a big, that's not only a nice goal, that's something we can change. The awareness factor, like you said, screening, making sure that we're informing our population, our communities. You've got to get in there early and get these kinds of screenings to take place. You know, and so answer me this, because something you know you get a yearly physical right, but cancer screen you don't normally get screened for cancer. How can we help with that?

Speaker 2:

I think there's. It depends on the specialty, the medical specialty, I think. You know. At my last physical I was asked, you know, when were you at your dentist the last time? When were you at a dermatologist the last time? Because of the prevalence, especially in South Florida, of skin cancer and how things are go unnoticed or you don't. You know, things are out of sight, out of mind and, and you know, going to those those primary visit, the primary doctor visits that are at, those doctors are asking you, are you going to those specialties? Are you having those regular checkups? Are you doing as much as you can to preempt any of this?

Speaker 2:

you know, this possible diagnosis of of cancer, whether it be you know an optometrist, or you know a urologist or a you know a gastroenterologist. Are you having those symptoms? Are you? Are you, are you being provided that education so that, when you do potentially have those symptoms, are you aware how to go about it? What do you need to do and that I think is really powerful, and how? How you know, I think healthcare is changing, and and to have to enable patients to take ownership of their own healthcare and to be their best advocate and understand that you know, your intuition may be the right call. Even though you might be dismissed by by a doctor, you know your body and you know your health better than anyone else does, and so enabling and empowering patients to take ownership of their health care, I think, is another great initiative that's going on right now.

Speaker 1:

I think you're right. I talked to a doctor last summer and he was a cancer doctor, oncologist in the melanoma world, and we're talking about melanoma and I didn't know. He said do you realize, like most people, when they actually get, uh, melanoma or you know the cancer, they get it when they're a child, right in the sun, but it doesn't develop, you know, until usually much later, so you're already exposed to it. You were you. You don't even realize you could have been five, six years old, because I guess something like your skin is not as strong to withstand some of the sun's rays and that type of thing. I didn't know that, you know. I just had no idea that going to the beach you're five, six years old and if you didn't have the right sunblocks on, you can be developing cancer and you wouldn't even realize you have it two years later.

Speaker 2:

Right, and it could be. Children don't like to listen to their parents and if they to being told, being told, go put on the sunblock and they don't put it on well enough or they don't do it at all, you know that that could be another, another issue, um, but yeah, it's a lot of a lot. There's a lot of, um, potential causes of, of, of cancer, and I think, especially in South Florida, being the, you know, the sunshine state and being a hotbed for no pun intended for the sun, you know melanoma is a particularly problematic, you know, skin cancer type in the region.

Speaker 1:

So let me ask you this when it comes to genetics, do you find that certain demographics of people are prone to different types of cancers whether it's their ethnicity, their race, maybe even their location than others?

Speaker 2:

I think there's a lot of research, especially now, going into social determinants of health and effects of race and ethnicity and whether they're genetically predisposed to different types of cancer based on which demographic you belong to. But I think that's still an ongoing area of research and it needs a little bit more investigation.

Speaker 1:

Do you think? Is it genetic? Let's say your parent had cancer? Is the likelihood you had cancer, or a grandparent, or is it something different?

Speaker 2:

or is it something different? Yeah, I think there's definitely anecdotal stories of you know parents and grandparents and family lineage of whether it's breast cancer, colon cancer. You know pancreatic prostate, what have you. There's definitely anecdotal evidence that shows that there's potentially a genetic link there. And you know, we heard maybe about a decade ago or 15 years ago, you know, testing for the BRCA gene was a very popular thing and so that's. You know, there's some evidence that there is a genetic predisposition for developing cancer. But I think it needs a lot more investigational research to really hammer down and nail down that true, definite link.

Speaker 1:

Well, I want to give you some research grants and some more funding. That sounds good. Any way I can, because it's important, right. It is Any way I can because it's important, right it is To understand that I mean, who would have known? Hey, let's go out to the ocean and look at some sponges and do some, you know, some research on them and see what they have going on with them, and then we can actually help a human being to cure cancer. To me that's such a leap, it's almost miraculous. Like how would that even occur? But you're telling me that there's so many things in the natural world that potentially can help in our human journey that we probably haven't even discovered yet because maybe potentially lack of research, lack of funding to actually go out and discover these kinds of things, and I think you are that kind of person that likes to discover these types of new things.

Speaker 2:

I do. That scientific curiosity that was born within me years ago still is what drives me and interests me, and it just takes a simple Google search to you know Google sponges and cancer and or marine natural products and cancer or marine natural products, medical uses and you can see the vast amounts of research that have that have gone on, that are ongoing and that will go on in the future, and that's that's a really exciting. You know in the future and that's a really exciting you know enmeshment, if you will, between my previous passion of marine biology and now my healthcare aspirations, and I think marrying those two together is honestly like a dream come true for me. So I'm excited to be a part of it.

Speaker 1:

I'm excited you are a part of it. I'm excited that you are a part of it. I'm excited to hear more about this. I think it's exciting, to be very honest, to understand what you're doing. It can help our current generations and our future generations. I've loved to see cancer just eradicated, so potentially, maybe there's a way of doing that, because if it's just instructions that are being given in the cellular world that is gone amiss, it's like a virus. Right, we have viruses in code, so it's a miscode. Maybe there is something there that we can reverse and get past cancer and move on to other challenges in the human world. Before I let you go, Kyle, I always like to ask my guests this, because now I like to be very, very transparent with my audience how do you feel and this is the first time you've been on the Follow the Brand podcast as a guest and now you've gone through, you know the entire interviewing process how do you feel about this?

Speaker 2:

I loved it. I loved how it was a conversation. It didn't feel like an interrogation. I loved how it was a conversation. It didn't feel like an interrogation, um, and it's, it was just a natural, you know, and it's it gives. It gave me the platform to say a lot of the things that I just don't get to do professionally. I don't get to, you know, expound on on my interests. I don't get to expound on my my you know my professional history and and where I've come from, where I am now and what I want to do in the future. So I'm very appreciative of this platform that you've graciously given me and I'm excited for what's to come and hopefully to get on here again in the future.

Speaker 1:

I'd love to have you on, I'd love to see you in person again One of the events down here in South Florida. This has been wonderful. Do you have the audience? How to contact you? Are you you know? Is it LinkedIn? Is it email? What's the best way?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, linkedin would be would be the quickest and most efficient way. You know, kyle Roebuck, if you, if you search that and you and you can match my my profile picture, which will be shared by Grant, then you can find me, connect with me and reach out with any questions you have. And I'd love to connect and to build that community even further.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, and remember he's not with the Sears and Roebuck family, he has his own family. I wish he's not with the Sears and Roebuck family. He has his own I wish.

Speaker 2:

I'm sorry, Grant, but if I was with Sears and Roebuck, I probably wouldn't be speaking with you right now.

Speaker 1:

We talked about that earlier. That is fine, but you do have a family business here in Florida. Was it Roebuck and Roebuck Insurance?

Speaker 2:

Yes, Roebuck Insurance, Roebuck I-N-S dot com. Excellent For any of your insurance needs. That's I'm. I decided not to go into insurance, but the rest of the family is. So if you need insurance, definitely give them a call.

Speaker 1:

Well, we'll definitely do that and I encourage your entire audience, your entire family, to tune into all the episodes of follow the brand. They can do so at the number five, that's five star. Bdm, that's B for brand, d for development and for masterscom. This has been wonderful, kyle. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much for having me Grant Hope to see you soon, Absolutely.