Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center investigators have been awarded a Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) in breast cancer, making VICC one of only seven centers in the country with three or more of these highly competitive grants from the National Cancer Institute.
The grant will provide $2.5 million in the first year, with total recommended funding over the five-year period of more than $13 million. The grant recognizes VICC's researchers for their innovative leadership in the development of new ways to treat and prevent breast cancer.
The NCI began the SPORE program 11 years ago to bridge the gap between the laboratory and the clinic and to foster innovative research with clear potential to make improvements in cancer treatment and prevention. Currently, 55 SPOREs are distributed among 24 institutions, according to the list provided at the recent 11th SPORE Investigators' Workshop hosted by the NCI.
"To be awarded a SPORE, centers have to be doing research that the NCI believes will really make an impact on the disease," said Dr. Carlos L. Arteaga, Professor of Medicine and Cancer Biology, Ingram Professor of Cancer Research and director of the new SPORE. "It is wonderful to have a seat at the table with the top breast cancer research centers in the country."
SPOREs are organized at cancer centers around a specific type of cancer. Each project must involve both basic and clinical scientists, must include a population-based research component, and must focus on translational research. This translational focus includes not only bringing discoveries in the laboratory to the clinical setting for investigation but also bringing clinical phenomena back to the laboratory to understand them and potentially develop novel ways to intervene.
"The SPOREs have been extraordinarily successful at accomplishing just what the Comprehensive Cancer Centers are all about - bringing basic scientists and clinicians together and providing a mechanism that ensures their collaboration," said Dr. Harold Moses, director of Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. Vanderbilt-Ingram is one of 39 NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers in the United States.
SPOREs fund specific scientific projects as well as core resources to be shared by the SPORE investigators. These cores provide sophisticated equipment and expertise vital to the success of the SPOREs. The SPOREs also provide important funding for career development and pilot projects, which are supplemented by matching funds from Vanderbilt Medical Center and Vanderbilt-Ingram. Each SPORE includes investigators from multiple academic departments and research teams.
Vanderbilt-Ingram's breast cancer SPORE will support four scientific projects:
· HER (erbB) tyrosine kinase inhibitors in treatment-naïve, operable breast cancer. One goal is to identify which breast cancers respond to these types of drugs as well as surrogate markers predictive of EGF receptor inactivation in situ.
· Predictive markers of clinical response to paclitaxel therapy in Stage II/III breast cancer. This project will test the hypothesis evidence of tumor cell arrest in the M phase of the cell cycle to predict response to paclitaxel. This study and the EGFR inhibitor project will use mass spectrometry in pre- and post-therapy biopsies to discover proteins that predict for drug sensitivity and resistance.
· Molecular imaging of breast carcinoma and its therapeutic response. This highly innovative project will use cutting-edge mass spectrometry approaches to analyze protein expression in breast tumors compared to normal tissue, with the aim of identifying protein profiles associated with different disease states as well as response to therapy.
· Molecular epidemiology of proliferative breast disease. This project will define the role of the transforming growth factor beta type II receptor and additional components of the TGF beta and EGFR signaling pathways in the development of pre-cancerous lesions of the breast.
SOURCE:
Vanderbilt University Medical Center (http://www.vanderbilt.edu)
