Donna McCarthy returns to the School of Nursing after two-year stint at NINR

Professor Donna McCarthy, PhD, RN, is among a cadre of passionate researchers found at the UW-Madison School of Nursing. As a nurse scientist, she burrows down into the world of cells and the substances (cytokines) they secrete in search of understanding and perhaps treating cachexia, a human response to cancer marked by loss of appetite, weight loss and muscle wasting.

It was McCarthy’s perseverance in researching the causes of cachexia in cancer patients for 15 years that drew the attention of the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR), which is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md.

Symptom management and the improvement of quality of life form the major research emphasis of the discipline of nursing, the NIH and the NINR. Accordingly, the NINR had reorganized their intramural research program in 2001 to include the new Laboratory of Symptom Management. The deputy director of the NINR called McCarthy and asked her to assume the leadership of establishing the laboratory and its program of research. The proposition, although highly attractive as well as prestigious, met with resistance on the home front.

“I could not talk my husband into moving,” says McCarthy, “so we arranged an alternate plan.”

The NINR, Katharyn May, dean of the School of Nursing, and Ann Lamboley in the Graduate School negotiated an interagency personal agreement (IPA), which, McCarthy explains, gave her 12 months to establish the lab at NINR while “on loan” from the UW. It gave her time to “test the waters” of the position and work setting while getting a lab established.

McCarthy moved out to Washington, D.C., in May of 2002. McCarthy’s research goals—to explore interventions that preserved body weight and muscle mass in patients with cancer—proved to be well aligned with the research goals of the NINR and NIH … in fact, so aligned that she stayed a second year.

McCarthy’s lab

McCarthy’s research examines the human condition of cachexia from a physiological perspective in a setting where cell cultures and protein assays are a part of everyday conversation. To the layperson, the nurse-scientist’s research requires arduous interpretation. However, its outcomes lay the foundation for future medical breakthroughs that improve the lives of cancer patients.

McCarthy strives to understand why cancer patients lose weight and muscle mass. The UW nurse-scientist believes that illness-induced anorexia seen in cancer patients is more than “just not feeling well.”

“As a clinician,” she says, “it became very clear to me that interventions to increase the nutritional intake of seriously ill persons was in need of an explanation as to why they did not eat.”

One focus of her research has been cytokines—proteins released from cells that can amplify or suppress parts of the immune system. Examining cytokines that are produced in tumor-bearing mice could offer an understanding of muscle wasting, anorexia or weight loss in cancer patients.

While at the NINR—and with plans to continue her research here at the SoN—McCarthy used an animal model to explore how different interventions, such as the introduction of ibuprofen or indomethacin may preserve body weight and muscle mass. Future plans for research include studying the affects of other anti-inflammatory interventions in the early stages of tumor growth versus later stages when cachexia becomes evident.

Returning home

Although McCarthy has returned to the School of Nursing, effective fall of 2004, she has agreed to continue her affiliation with the NINR as acting lab chief at 20 percent time until a new lab chief is hired sometime the first quarter of 2005. Until then, she continues to fly to Washington, D.C., every third week of the month to keep the lab fully functional while the search for her successor progresses.

McCarthy notes that she had “a great time at the NIH and in D.C.” Beyond her professional activities, she has established a network of tennis players in the nation’s capital area who feed her passion for the sport—and make the trip more enjoyable.

McCarthy anticipates that her relationship with NIH will reap rewards for School of Nursing students. “I will look for ways to get our students in for summer research rotations, says McCarthy,” adding that a visit to the NIH Web site (http://www.nih.gov/) may pique a student’s interest.

Welcome home, Prof. McCarthy! Visit her faculty Web site: http://www.son.wisc.edu/directories/faculty/mccarthy/mccarthy.htm