Despite an economic climate shaped by budget cuts, the NCI funded four new Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) grants before the fiscal year ended on September 30.
The NCI awarded a total of $106 million to fund the new awards, as well as 48 renewed or continuing grants, says Toby Hecht, PhD, deputy director of the NCI's Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis. Barring further budget cuts, she expects the NCI will continue to award new SPOREs at the same level as in previous years.
“SPOREs are the only NCI grant mechanism that is entirely translational, requiring each scientific project to achieve a human endpoint during the 5-year funding period,” says Hecht. “It's also a team science effort, with each project co-led by basic and clinical investigators working together, allowing a swift translation from the bench to bedside.”
Established in 1992, SPOREs have historically supported organ-specific studies, such as those for breast or brain cancers. In recent years, the NCI has encouraged grant applications for research centered on cancers connected by a cross-cutting theme, such as shared signaling pathways. Each award supports at least four translational research projects and requires “core” areas that bolster research infrastructure with informatics, biospecimen or pathology repositories, and programs for career enhancement.
SPORE funding has led to countless findings and spurred many advances, including the development of early-detection biomarker panels for lung and ovarian cancers, novel drug-delivery systems for prostate cancer, and evidence that oncolytic viruses may control advanced malignancies.
The latest grants—each totaling $2.185 million a year for 5 years—will fund research on the following:
Neuroendocrine tumors; University of Iowa Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center in Iowa City. Researchers plan to investigate theranostics, molecular pathway inhibitors, and tumor genetics, and to launch a phase I trial of combinations of radionuclide therapies, says James Howe, MD, a SPORE project leader and codirector of the Neuroendocrine Cancer Clinic at Iowa's Carver College of Medicine.
Multiple myeloma; Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, AZ. A collaborative endeavor, investigators hail from three Mayo Clinic Cancer Center sites, says Leif Bergsagel, MD, the team's principal investigator. The work will include a clinical trial of an oncolytic virus to treat relapsed multiple myeloma led by Stephen Russell, MD, PhD, Mayo's dean of Discovery Science.
Non–small cell lung cancer; Yale Comprehensive Cancer Center in New Haven, CT. The effort will be led by Roy S. Herbst, MD, PhD, chief of medical oncology at Yale and the Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale–New Haven. One project, on the therapeutic potential for noncoding microRNAs, will be co-led by Frank J. Slack, PhD, the director of the Institute for RNA Medicine at the Cancer Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, MA.
Pediatric cancers related to neurofibromatosis type 1 gene mutations; Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis, with colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, and other institutions. Funds will launch clinical trials of molecular inhibitors in patients with plexiform neurofibromas, malignant nerve sheath tumors, and juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia, says D. Wade Clapp, MD, chair of the university's pediatrics department and an investigator on the grant.
Commenting on his team's work, yet making a statement that could apply to many cancer researchers, Clapp says that “years of preclinical work are finally paying off. For the first time ever, we're seeing signatures in human tumors, in cancers where there's been no therapy.”
- ©2015 American Association for Cancer Research.
Volume 5, Issue 12
