Facilitate the transition of projects from the laboratory to the clinic. Translational researchers seek to apply basic knowledge of cancer and bring the benefits of the new basic-level understandings to patients more quickly and efficiently. These grants are $600,000, three-year commitments
Leukemia is a type of blood cancer. Leukemia is the most common cancer in children. Overall, the chance that a child with leukemia can be cured is high. However, when leukemia occurs in babies, the chance of cure is much lower. We are trying to find new and better treatments for these babies. These leukemias have abnormal ways of organizing their DNA. This may be making them harder to cure. We want to understand this better. We want to find new treatments that can fix this abnormal DNA organization. We hope this will help cure more babies.
Uterine cancer is a cancer that grows in the lining of a woman’s uterus (womb). In the United States, uterine cancer is the most common cancer of the female sex organs. Most often, women with this type of cancer have periods that are not normal or have bleeding after they have gone through menopause. By the time this bleeding starts, the cancer may have spread to other sites and organs. If it is caught at an early stage, it can be treated more easily and there is a higher chance of cancer cure. Right now there is not a screening test for this cancer. Our research project aims to design a simple screening test for uterine cancer.
Uterine cancer is caused by changes in the normal cells lining it. These changes can be found in the blood and fluid that passes into the vagina from the uterus. This fluid can be collected using a tampon. Better understanding changes in normal sex organ tissues and in different types of uterine cancer will help us identify the changes that truly represent the presence of a cancer. Our screening test will find the changes that identify cancer in fluid that can be collected using a tampon. We also expect that the cancer changes will be found even in women without bleeding that have an early cancer. The hope is that finding cancer early will lead to improved cancer outcomes.
This research will help us improve a new type of therapy for children with neuroblastoma. Neuroblastoma is a deadly tumor in the nervous system outside the brain. With this therapy doctors administer both chemotherapy and a protein (antibody) that attaches to tumor cells at the same time. This combination, a form of chemo-immunotherapy, was tested on children whose tumors had not decreased even after many rounds of chemotherapy. These children would have died, but chemo-immunotherapy literally melted the tumors off after a few rounds of treatment. The results of this study have not been published yet but are already being used by doctors to successfully treat these children.
Despite this great outcome, half of the children did not respond to the new treatment. There is still a lot to learn about chemo-immunotherapy. In this study, we will test patients’ tumors and find out how their blood cells change with chemo-immunotherapy. We hypothesize that chemo-immunotherapy is assisted by white blood cells destroying tumor cells. Our goal is to study how tumor cells stop or slow down the effect of this therapy. If we are successful, we can modify chemo-immunotherapy to work in all children with neuroblastoma.
The initial treatment of men with prostate cancer is highly successful in stopping the primary cancer. However, years later men often develop cancer again and it is commonly deadly. One explanation for cancer returning is that the cancer was sleeping and in doing so, it was not affected by the first medicine. Our team discovered a new treatment to put cancer to sleep in the body. By using laboratory tests and information from patients, we discovered a “fingerprint” that can tell us if and how the cancer is sleeping or growing. However, for reasons that remain unclear, the sleeping cancer eventually awakens in a deadly form. We discovered that using known medicines we could keep the cancer asleep. We propose to use these medicines that are available for other diseases to induce an constant sleeping state in cancer, preventing its awakening. We will also find new indicators of the sleeping or growing state of cancer using a blood test. If successful, our new treatment to keep cancer sleeping may provide a new cure for men with prostate cancer.
