(continued from page 2)
“Gleevec is a beautiful example of a targeted therapy and it got everyone in the cancer field excited,” according to Matrisian. “It is a drug designed to interact with a specific protein that in essence drives the cancer. If you stop that protein you stop the cancer.”
Matrisian is one of the Vanderbilt-Ingram researchers devoted to advancing translational research so patients benefit more quickly from discoveries in the laboratory. She is now taking her expertise to Washington, D.C., where she has been appointed to a leadership post with the National Cancer Institute’s Translational Research Group. For the next two years she will spend half of her time at NCI headquarters, spearheading the effort to streamline the government’s oversight and funding of translational research.
Vanderbilt-Ingram now ranks seventh in the nation in research funding from the NCI, receiving 147 grants of more than $66 million in fiscal year 2007. This includes three SPORE grants (in lung, breast and gastrointestinal cancer) and other “team science” grants designed to facilitate the interaction and collaboration required to make scientific translation happen more deliberately and more quickly. In fact, to be successfully funded, SPOREs must focus on translational research that links knowledge of human biology to develop and test interventions in patients.
“It is absolutely critical to have an environment in which a variety of individuals work well together as a team – basic researchers, physician-scientists and physicians who focus on patient,” said Jennifer Pietenpol, Ph.D., director of Vanderbilt-Ingram. “The SPOREs, for example, include investigators in 10 or 12 different academic departments and divisions, all bringing their perspective, knowledge and skills to bear. The growth in our funding is a tribute to our approach to team science and our focus on how we can impact patients.”
One focus of Pietenpol’s own NCI-funded research is to find biomarkers for a type of breast cancer whose causes remain a mystery. These so-called “triple negative” breast cancers are negative for estrogen and progesterone receptor expression and HER2 gene amplification. While they have a distinct gene expression profile, they do not respond to commonly used chemotherapy drugs. Pietenpol, Ingrid Mayer, M.D., Josh Bauer, Ph.D., and Jennifer Rosenbluth are trying to find the clues that will tell them what is driving cancer growth in those tumors. If they can find those targets in the laboratory, they may be able to identify combinations of drugs or targeted therapies that can effectively stop or slow the cancer’s growth.
While the mechanisms for some types of cancer are still hidden in the maelstrom of human biology, researchers say the mist is beginning to clear and it’s happening quickly.
“It’s important for people to know that the gap between what we understand about cancer and what we can do about cancer has significantly narrowed in the last 10 years,” explained Robert Coffey Jr., M.D., professor of Cell and Developmental Biology and co-director of the Vanderbilt-Ingram GI SPORE grant from NCI. The GI SPORE is focused on colorectal cancer research. An estimated 153,760 patients were diagnosed with colon and rectal cancer in the United States in 2007 with 52,180 deaths, according to the NCI.
Coffey and GI SPORE co-director Mace Rothenberg, M.D., professor of Medicine, are utilizing the Vanderbilt imaging center to look at what happens to cells when they are hit with targeted agents.
“We have been able to non-invasively image cell proliferation, cell death or apoptosis and EGF receptor levels in mouse tumors, and we can do it in real time,” said Coffey. “We’re hoping to advance these imaging capabilities into human trials so we can determine whether a patient has responded to a treatment. This would eliminate the need for invasive tumor biopsies.”
Coffey says far too few patients are signing up for the clinical trials that could determine how well some of the new targeted agents work. Those clinical trials have helped accelerate the pace of translational research.
|
