Kunle Odunsi, the AbbVie Foundation Distinguished Service Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Courtesy of Kunle Odunsi.

Kunle Odunsi, the AbbVie Foundation Distinguished Service Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the Class of 2025 convocation speaker, has served as the director of UChicago Medicine’s Comprehensive Cancer Center since 2021. He sat down with the Maroon this month to discuss his career, UChicago Medicine’s new cancer care and research center, and his upcoming convocation address.  

Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity. 

Chicago Maroon: Could you describe your educational and career background? 

Kunle Odunsi: After [medical school], I studied in [a] residency training program in obstetrics and gynecology. I did my first residency training in the United Kingdom [and] that led to membership [in] the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. After that, I became really very interested in cancer, the cancer aspect of gynecology, cancer of the women’s reproductive tract. I felt that it was necessary: there [were] a lot of gaps in research, understanding of the basis of cancer development, and metastasis. 

CM: How did you get into researching ovarian cancer? 

KO: [There are] two or three major events that led me to be focused on research in ovarian cancer. 

Number one was way back in medical school when I had been exposed to the field of immunology—just [a] fascinating field with regards to how the immune system can recognize and kill pathogens. When we have bacterial viruses invade our bodies, the immune system has this extraordinary ability to discriminate self from non-self and destroy invaders. So from very early on, that really sparked my interest in the field. 

And then as I went into my clinical programs and clinical years and studied obstetrics and gynecology, [I] had [an] interest in gynecologic cancers, based on the fact that I saw a number of patients with cancers [and] the suffering and pain that came with it. And [I saw that] even for myself, in some family members. That made me gravitate towards cancer.  

And then after I really started practicing as a faculty [member], as a clinician in gynecologic oncology, what I found challenging was patients with ovarian cancer, because many times those patients present with late diagnoses. By the time we see many of those patients, the cancer has spread to stage three or four, so that’s the number one problem. Then number two is, when we do surgery followed by chemotherapy, many [patients] go into remission, but the point is that those remissions are not long lasting—the cancers tend to come back. And many times when they come back, they become more aggressive and ultimately lead to a bad outcome.  

So I began to think about how I can help patients when they are in remission. Can we take the knowledge of immunology, where we know that the immune system can fight foreign invaders? If you consider cancer as foreign invaders as well, can we train the immune system to recognize and destroy them? That was the simple question that I asked at the beginning of my career: can we turn the immune system against cancer in multiple different ways? And those efforts by our group and others have yielded modest levels of success. There are many cancers today that are treated with immunotherapy. It’s been the breakthrough of the last 10 years. But I believe we’re still scratching the surface. There’s much more to be done, to be discovered, to be translated to patients for better outcomes.  

So what else do we need to do to improve the efficacy of immunotherapy? Even in patients who respond initially, the cancer tends to fight back. It develops resistance. So how can we overcome resistance to immunotherapy? Those are some of the ongoing questions in our group, in my lab, as well as in labs by other investigators here at UChicago. 

CM: UChicago Medicine is constructing a new cancer center; could you discuss how that project is currently going? 

KO: That project is one of the most exciting projects that I have ever been involved with—to have a building fully dedicated to cancer patients and care is remarkable.  

My understanding is that we are on schedule or maybe even a little bit ahead of schedule [with construction], which is very exciting. So this building will become a building of hope, a building where… every patient that comes into the building, along with their families, will have hope, and they will have [the] ability to have people walk with them along the cancer journey. 

Cancer is a very difficult problem. It’s not just affecting that individual, it’s affecting the entire family, sometimes the community. So in this building, patients will have access to the best care possible: compassionate care. They will have access to the latest and best innovative clinical trials. There is essentially research embedded in the DNA of the building… [the] opportunity to understand, prevent, and potentially cure cancer is the goal, the mission in this building. 

CM: What opportunities will the new cancer center provide for UCMed and its patients?

KO: So the new Cancer Pavilion will provide tremendous opportunities. If you think about it as a hub and spoke model, where [the Pavilion] is the hub of a larger network, which we now have in the region: an extensive network of clinics and hospitals where patients can have access to [the] outstanding care that is going on here in Hyde Park. So the patients will have opportunities to have access to world-class physicians, who are the best anywhere. That’s number one.  

They will have access to compassionate care. This new building will have [the] ability for you to navigate very seamlessly. Think about it: sometimes cancer patients have to go to multiple appointments. You see a radiation doctor on one side, you see an oncologist on the other side, maybe you need to see a psychologist on another side. Everything is consolidated in this new facility.  

What I’m also proud of is that we will have programs in survivorship. How are we taking care of those who actually survive? We know that many cancer treatments have side effects that persist for [a] long [time], so [we need] survivorship [programs] and supportive care, which are different from giving chemotherapy or radiation therapy to somebody. 

And finally, most importantly, is access to clinical trials. These are innovative trials that would make a tremendous impact on the lives of patients. We have one of the largest clinical trials portfolios in the country for cancer patients. With this new pavilion, we will continue to build on that portfolio and bring the latest and best treatments that are based on very strong scientific research to our patients. 

CM: The South Side and surrounding areas face a disproportionately high cancer burden. Are there any actions that UCMed is taking to help address this? 

KO: Absolutely… Part of my job is community outreach and engagement. So we have a community advisory board for the cancer center, trying to understand the issues that are most important to our community and taking into account those issues in formulating our research plans, in driving some of the priorities of the cancer center. That’s number one. 

Number two, we have a lot of outreach activities where we’re doing cancer health education. We engage with community leaders, with religious organizations, with not-for-profit organizations… to provide education as well as screening services. Screening is very important. [When] patients get screened, you can detect cancer early, when it’s potentially curable, [rather] than when it’s late. So one of the efforts is really to enhance screening services. We’ve also partnered with some of the federally qualified health centers, as well as safety-net hospitals, to make sure that patients in this outside community can be navigated very well into the health system for care. 

The other thing that we’ve done is partner with the Urban Health Initiative. This is a South Side community health organization, a program that involves UChicago Medicine and many other not-for-profit organizations in the South Side community, where we have community health workers who are helping patients to navigate the health system so they can gain access to care.  

So there are many ongoing programs that are targeted to our South Side community in order to help with prevention through health education, early detection through screening programs, and therapies when they actually develop cancer to make sure they have access to the world-class care that’s available at UChicago Medicine. And as I said earlier, we have programs in supportive care and survivorship to have them navigate quality of life after completing their treatment for cancer. 

CM: Do you have any advice for aspiring scientists based on your experiences? 

KO: Science is actually very exciting. The main advice that I would give is [that] it does require persistence—persistence and constantly think[ing] outside the box—because some of the things that are existing paradigms may not necessarily hold true. So it’s important to be persistent in how you are pursuing your research question and not to give up.  

For the longest time, most people believed that immunotherapy was not going to work for cancer. I told you how the immune system can work well against bacteria and viruses, and frankly, that’s how we have survived as a species. Most people believed that [the] immune system [was]not going to work against cancer, because cancer is part of the cell. [The] immune system is trained only to attack foreign invaders, not cells. So for the longest time, there was generalized skepticism.  

But look what happened because of persistence of people in the field—some of them my mentors—not giving up on trying to unlock the secret of how the immune system can recognize and destroy cancer. That’s how we made progress and got to this point. So my advice is this whole thing about persistence, relentless pursuit of your question. 

CM: Now, some questions about the upcoming convocation. What does education mean to you?  

KO: Good question. Education, in my view, involves the whole totality of what you learn as a person. I will tell you what it is not. It is not just classroom work. Classroom work is important, and don’t get me wrong about that. It’s important to get your degree. But education is much more than that. It includes how you build your character, what your values [are], how you see yourself in society. So it’s really about the total person—the emotional, psychological development of the total person. Education is what makes you who you are. You are educated from all angles of your life—academic work is just one component of education, in my view.  

CM: What is the most important thing you want the graduating class to take away from your speech? 

KO: I’m still working on my speech, but I think the most important thing is for [students] to know that they can make a difference in our society. 

Everyone, especially after receiving a UChicago education, every graduating member of [the] 2025 class should understand that they have the ability to make a difference in our society, to make an impact, because they are the future of our country. 

CM: What is the best advice you can give regarding saying goodbye and dealing with change? 

KO: Change is inevitable. As you go from a student to a graduate, that is already a change; you’re going into the real world. So take it in your stride, because, again, change is inevitable. There are going to be multiple steps where there is going to be change. It’s going to be important to adjust to change and use it also as an educational opportunity, as much as possible. 

CM: What do you think is the biggest challenge that the current graduating class is facing?  

KO: I think the current graduating class is coming out at a time of unprecedented changes—we just talked about change—in our country right now, where there are a lot of policy changes. 

Again, it’s going to be important for the class to recognize the current environment and ask the question, what are the opportunities that exist, even with the changes that we are seeing going on right in front of our eyes? So I think the challenge for this class is how to adapt to the ongoing change. How does that impact the long-range future 10, 20, 30 years from now? And what are the opportunities for them to make an impact, a long-lasting impact on society, even within the framework of the current ongoing change? 

CM: Do you have one last piece of advice for graduating students? 

KO: Know who you are. Stay true to who you are. Stay true to your values. And be a good ambassador for the University of Chicago!