Primary Appointment

Dr. Charles Cleeland, MD Anderson's McCullough Professor of Cancer Research, is a leader in the area of cancer symptom epidemiology, assessment and treatment. He has directed epidemiological studies of pain and other symptoms in patients with cancer, studies of the mechanisms of pain and other symptoms, studies using PET and functional MRI to examine the effects of pain on cortical activity, and clinical trials aimed at reducing the risk of inadequate symptom control, including in underserved populations.

Dr. Cleeland is senior scientific advisor of the Pan American Health Organization/WHO. He is a member and past president of the board of directors of the United States Cancer Pain Relief Committee. He is also past president of the American Pain Society. 

Dr. Cleeland's research is widely published. He has published numerous studies of the prevalence and severity of cancer pain, of U.S. and international symptom management practice patterns, and of potential biological mechanisms underlying the symptoms produced by cancer and its treatment.

Dr. Cleeland and his colleagues in the Department of Symptom Research have developed assessment tools (the Brief Pain Inventory, Brief Fatigue Inventory, and M. D. Anderson Symptom Inventory) to measure symptom severity and how symptoms interfere with patient functioning. These tools are widely used internationally in clinical trials evaluating symptom-management treatments.

As Director of the WHO Collaborating Center for Supportive Cancer Care, Dr. Cleeland worked with colleagues in Asia, Europe, and the United States to verify that our symptom-assessment scales work well in various linguistic and cultural contexts to allow development of multinational clinical trials and cross-cultural epidemiological symptom studies. Through ongoing international collaborations, he works to further the stateside training of clinicians and researchers from other countries, provide resources to educate abroad, encourage treatment of cancer-related pain and other symptoms for those without access to expensive curative treatments, and promote palliative care programs in countries with limited health care resources.

Dr. Cleeland's long-term research goals are to prevent the development of symptoms and to develop enhanced treatments for the symptoms of cancer and cancer treatment, which may lead to improvement in patient function, stress level, satisfaction with and willingness to endure therapy, and quality of life during and after treatment. He is especially interested in the role of inflammation as a physiological mechanism potentially responsible for symptom-cluster generation and in biological response modifiers as agents for symptom reduction and prevention. Based on animal models of inflammation-induced sickness behavior, he hypothesizes that inflammation and its downstream toxic effects represent a significant biological basis for subjectively reported clusters of symptoms, cognitive impairment, and neuropathies. Control or prevention of cancer-related cytokine dysregulation may provide a basis for experimental therapies that could significantly reduce or even preclude the emergence of cancer-related symptoms.

Last updated: 3/11/2013