New Breast Cancer Treatments May Stem from $16.5 Million Award

[babylonsister]

New Breast Cancer Treatments May Stem from $16.5 Million Award

June 1, 2009


A UCSF research pioneer in breast cancer – a disease that still kills about 40,000 US women each year – will co-lead a new, $16.5 million effort to develop more effective, targeted therapies to vanquish various types of breast tumors, including cancers that are particularly unresponsive to current treatments.

Joe Gray, PhD, director of the Life Sciences Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and leader of the Breast Oncology Program at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, will help spearhead the effort.

The three-year, $16.5 million award was made by Stand Up to Cancer, an Entertainment Industry Foundation charitable organization. Working with the American Association for Cancer Research, the foundation awarded a total of $73.6 million to five research teams, each boasting extensive depth and breadth of scientific expertise. With Dennis Slamon, MD, PhD, director of clinical/translational research at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, Gray co-leads what has been dubbed the Breast Cancer Dream Team. Thirteen leading scientists are taking part.

Thanks to large-scale, government-funded efforts such as the Human Genome Project, scientists have gained a significant understanding about how specific genes and molecules can go awry and contribute to the formation of potentially deadly tumors.

“We’ve made significant progress in our understanding of the molecular basis of cancer,” Gray says. “We know now that breast cancer is not one disease. It’s a collection of several different diseases.” The abnormal genes and proteins driving cancer growth can vary from tumor to tumor.

The goal now is to develop individualized therapy. Different women will receive different treatments, based on specific characteristics of different tumors. “We need to match individual cancers with specific therapies and to bring personalized cancer treatment to the clinic, where it can save lives,” Gray says.

more...

http://www.ucsf.edu/science-cafe/articles/new-breast-cancer-treatments-may-stem-from-16.5-million-award/

[Ocracoker16]

1. Maybe they will find something for triple negatives

Triple negative breast cancer patients have tumors that aren't fueled by progesterone or estrogen which would respond to hormonal therapies such as Tamoxifen. The tumors are also not driven by Herceptin which is a protein that occurs on the tumor which biological therapy can destroy.

My mom has breast cancer and she has lost atleast 3 friends from chemo that had triple negative breast cancer and didn't respond to the few treatments available. I hope this money will help them find other proteins that may be fueling the growth of tumors.