KC Business Journal: Fighting the good fight against cancer: Dr. Jaszianne Tolbert
“I just fell in love with the patients and the families.... I enjoyed talking to these kids who seemed to be much older than they were because they’d been through so much already.”
Dr. Jaszianne Tolbert’s time isn’t dedicated to discovering the next great chemotherapy drug, but to determining the optimal dose of such drugs for young cancer patients.
A pediatric hematologist-oncologist, Tolbert works at Children’s Mercy to personalize or refine dosing for five drugs widely used to treat leukemia and lymphoma patients.
“That’s where my research lies: getting adequate exposure for everybody,” Tolbert said. “We don’t want to get too small of a dose and undertreat somebody. We don’t want to get too big of a dose and cause toxicity.”
Tolbert joined Children’s Mercy after completing her pediatrics residency in Arkansas. The plan had always been to return to her hometown in Louisiana and take over her former pediatrician’s practice. But she chose to pursue oncology instead.
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Article by Elise Reuter, photo by Andrew Grumke