Get to Know...Kerry Rogers, MD

Kerry Rogers, MD, an Associate Professor in the College of Medicine at The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, sat down with Blood Cancers Today to discuss her career trajectory, her current chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) research, and what being a doctor is about—and even shared a glimpse of her pet guinea pigs, Maple and Brady.

How did you know that you wanted to become a hematologist-oncologist?

When I was a kid, I thought medicine was so interesting. Being a doctor is the combination of science and biology, which I’ve always liked, and the other half is people and their stories. Medicine is the sometimes-messy interplay of science—or using science to solve problems—and trying to help a person with a problem.

I’m fortunate in my current practice to work at an academic center where we have patients that are very educated about CLL. Sometimes we have people in the community we serve—which is not only Columbus, but the rural surrounding communities—whose health literacy is not as good and don’t know much about it. It’s fun to try to meet people where they’re at.

I’ve always liked that about medicine. I like helping people and hearing their stories. It’s the nature of what being a doctor is. I pursued an undergraduate degree in biological sciences with a concentration in molecular genetics at Northwestern, studying cells and how they work.

At Chicago Medical School, I grew an appreciation for the practice of medicine and hearing people’s stories. After medical school, I wanted to have an academic residency experience and went to the University of Michigan. I was drawn to internal medicine, and then specifically hematology and oncology because of the cell molecular biology aspects of the disease. I really liked the patient relationships that I observed there and the way that physicians interact with patients.

I went to Ohio State for fellowship because of their huge hematology program and the opportunities to get involved in some of the academic aspects. I liked what I was doing and the people I worked with. It’s a great comprehensive cancer center with a huge cancer hospital. Not many places have a financially freestanding cancer hospital like we do. Having such excellent cancer care in Central Ohio has been really fun to be a part of.

When did you know you wanted to specialize in CLL?

I ended up in CLL during fellowship. I love being a doctor, but research adds a whole other dimension because you can address problems that you’re seeing in your patients through deeper science than just reviewing the literature or using your knowledge of science. You actually get to generate some of that knowledge.

At Ohio State, I got to know the group that was doing CLL and hairy cell leukemia and thought, “This is what I’d like to be a part of.” It was fun and productive, and I liked what I could contribute here. I liked the patient population and that a lot of patients with CLL and hairy cell leukemia are quite well. Even if they’re experiencing a lot of disease symptoms or aren’t doing well right now, the general expectation is that they’ll get to be healthy, functional people for years to come.

I spend more time in my clinic trying to convince people that they’re well than trying to get someone through a severe illness episode. You do still get some patients that are quite sick, so you do have to use that skill set too.

What exciting new research are you working on right now?

The field has been focused on targeted agents for the last 15 years rather than chemotherapies. These targeted agents are safer and more effective. We would love to cure CLL, but we can’t in a feasible way right now. If you can’t cure something, the next best thing is trying to get people to live with it as well as possible with the least impact on their life.

Some patients don’t need treatment and can be observed until they need treatment, but there’s been a lot of focus on making treatments for CLL safer and more effective. I’m really excited about the combination of targeted agents with BTK [Bruton’s tyrosine kinase] inhibitors and BCL-2 inhibitors.

I’m leading a couple of clinical trials in a resistance setting. Patients whose CLL is resistant to targeted agents are taking these combinations, and we’re trying to understand how to best utilize these combinations. They are usually given for a fixed duration, unlike BTK inhibitors, which are given indefinitely until people develop side effects and have to discontinue treatment, or their CLL becomes resistant. It’s been fun to look at these combinations and try to understand how to best utilize these treatments in what combination, and in what order, across someone’s lifespan.

Since 2014, I’ve had a clinical trial of ibrutinib, venetoclax and obinutuzumab as a fixed-duration treatment. We now have data for how people have done over many years to try to better understand how these fixed duration regimens impact people over the whole disease course or lifetime. The major benefit is that people stop treatment and are in remission for years after finishing it, and we’re seeing that you can use those classes of drugs again to treat people. That’s really exciting.

I also have [a] study of pirtobrutinib, a BTK inhibitor that works after covalent BTK inhibitors (ibrutinib, acalabrutinib, and zanubrutinib) have stopped working or the CLL cells are resistant to them. We have a single institution study looking at a combination of pirtobrutinib and venetoclax given for a fixed duration of around a year and a half for people whose CLL has recurred or progressed while they’re taking a covalent BTK inhibitor. We’re looking at getting deep responses and being able to stop treatment.

We’ve had earlier studies adding venetoclax to ibrutinib for resistance, suggesting that this works better. We’re trying to change disease expectations or treatment expectations for patients by using these combinations in both the initial and the resistance setting.

What do you hope to see in CLL over the next 10 years?

There are unmet needs for younger people with high-risk disease who don’t currently have enough treatments to expect to get through their whole lifespan. We also have a lot of people who are very elderly. We should continue to focus on how to treat people who are very unfit or elderly so that they can get effective care.

I hope the field continues to work on supportive care. CLL cells impact immune function, and patients live at a higher risk of second cancer or infections. The original mortality from COVID-19 in CLL patients was around 30%. This is a huge problem, so I hope we continue to work on that.

The overall goal is to make sure that the survival expectation for everybody is a normal lifespan and to continue to reduce the impact of CLL on people’s lives through safer, more effective treatment that they don’t need as much.

What hobbies or activities do you enjoy outside of work?

Dr, Rogers’ pet guinea pigs, Maple and Brady.

I have two rescue guinea pigs named Maple and Brady. They’re very playful and fun to interact with, but they will only wake up if you have vegetables for them. I’ve had guinea pigs since medical school; they are the perfect pet.

I also enjoy college football. I’m a Northwestern fan because that’s where I went for undergrad.

I like cooking for fun. My favorite thing to cook is optimized macaroni and cheese, like using different cheeses. I also have a hydroponic lettuce grow; there’s water in the base, and you can have hydroponic lettuce growing in your house whenever you want. You have extra fresh vegetables for your pets!

Read more: Dr. Rogers Discusses Takeaways From the CLL Debate at SOHO 2024