Top Stories - Cancer

Human squamous carcinoma cells with ATF2 (green) located at mitochondria (red) after exposure to genotoxic stress. Nuclei are shown in blue.
Molecular switch that allows...

Sanford-Burnham researchers identify protein kinase Cɛ as a molecular switch that determines...

Cerebellar stem cells engineered to express Myc and mutant p53 (shown here) give rise to aggressive tumors that resemble a particularly malignant form of human medulloblastoma, providing a new model that will help scientists develop more effective therapies for this disease.
New model of childhood brain...

Sanford-Burnham researchers create a new mouse model for a particularly malignant form of...

MLN4924 kills most cancer cells by binding and inactivating the NEDD8-activating enzyme. NEDD8 and the enzymes that control it are part of the ubiquitin proteasome system. This complex network of enzymes tags proteins with a molecule called ubiquitin. Once it receives this “kiss of death,” a protein is destined for the proteasome, the cell’s "meat grinder." Depending on which proteins are being destroyed, this process helps control almost every aspect of cellular function and is frequently altered in cancer.
Cancer drug’s secret to...

Dr. Matt Petroski and colleagues outline a new method to test a tumor’s resistance to an...

Dr. Elena Pasquale examines Eph receptors.
Sending medicine where it’s...

A collaboration between Sanford-Burnham research Dr. Maurizio Pellecchia and Dr. Elena Pasquale uses...

Meet a cancer researcher: Michiko Fukuda

by on May 16, 2012 at 9:17 am | 0 Comments
Full Article
Fukuda_archive

On June 5, 2012, California voters will have an opportunity to consider Proposition 29, also known as the California Cancer Research Act. Prop 29’s goal is to provide funding for cancer research by increasing the tax on a pack of cigarettes by $1. Sanford-Burnham’s Board of Trustees endorsed Prop 29 in September 2011. The University of California Regents has also voted to support it, along with the American Cancer Society, American Lung Association, American Heart Association, Stand Up To Cancer, and the Lance Armstrong Foundation (Livestrong).

We are presenting a series of blog posts to allow you to meet some of our cancer researchers and gain a better understanding of how the projected $735 million generated annually by the passing of Prop 29 would benefit cancer research in California.

Meet Michiko Fukuda, Ph.D., professor in our NCI-designated Cancer Center.

Read More

Meet a cancer researcher: Jochen Maurer

by on May 11, 2012 at 6:48 am | 0 Comments
Full Article
Dr. Maurer with Sanford-Burnham co-founder Lillian Fishman

Dr. Maurer with Sanford-Burnham co-founder Lillian Fishman

On June 5, 2012, California voters will have an opportunity to consider Proposition 29, also known as the California Cancer Research Act. Prop 29’s goal is to provide funding for cancer research by increasing the tax on a pack of cigarettes by $1. Sanford-Burnham’s Board of Trustees endorsed Prop 29 in September 2011. The University of California Regents has also voted to support it, along with the American Cancer Society, American Lung Association, American Heart Association, Stand Up To Cancer, and the Lance Armstrong Foundation (Livestrong).

We are presenting a series of blog posts to allow you to meet some of our cancer researchers and gain a better understanding of how the projected $735 million generated annually by the passing of Prop 29 would benefit cancer research in California.

Meet Jochen Maurer, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Robert Oshima, Ph.D, professor in our NCI-designated Cancer Center.

Read More

And the Cancer Center Pilot Project Program grants go to…

by on May 10, 2012 at 9:40 am | 0 Comments
Full Article
Two research teams, including Dr. Ranjan Perera (left) and Dr. Steven Smith (right), were awarded Pilot Project Program grants from Sanford-Burnham's NCI-designated Cancer Center

Two research teams, including Dr. Ranjan Perera (left) and Dr. Steven Smith (right), were awarded Pilot Project Program grants from Sanford-Burnham's NCI-designated Cancer Center

As part of its Pilot Project Program, Sanford-Burnham’s National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated Cancer Center received and reviewed 10 applications for funding this year. Applications for these grants, designed to kick-start new collaborative projects, were submitted by scientists from all of the Institute’s research centers and they were reviewed by a panel of senior faculty members, including adjunct faculty, scientific advisory board (SAB) members, and external experts.

More than 20 researchers and experts participated in this year’s peer-review process to select the winners of the grants. The applications and the respective reviews were then discussed by a panel, which ranked the grants and determined the winners.

On May 1, the two grants of $75,000 each were awarded to:

Read More

It’s a trap! New laboratory technique captures microRNA targets

by on May 9, 2012 at 9:43 am | 3 Comments
Full Article
Huricha Baigude, Ph.D., postdoctoral researcher and first author of the study

Huricha Baigude, Ph.D., postdoctoral researcher and first author of the study

Human cells are thought to produce thousands of different microRNAs (miRNAs)—small pieces of genetic material that help determine which genes are turned on or off at a given time. miRNAs are an important part of normal cellular function, but they can also contribute to human disease—some are elevated in certain tumors, for example, where they promote cell survival. But to better understand how miRNAs influence health and disease, researchers first need to know which miRNAs are acting upon which genes—a big challenge considering their sheer number and the fact that each single miRNA can regulate hundreds of target genes. Enter miR-TRAP, a new easy-to-use method to directly identify miRNA targets in cells. This technique, developed by Tariq Rana, Ph.D., professor and program director at Sanford-Burnham, and his team, was first revealed in a paper published May 8 by the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

“This method could be widely used to discover miRNA targets in any number of disease models, under physiological conditions,” Rana said. “miR-TRAP will help bridge a gap in the RNA field, allowing researchers to better understand diseases like cancer and target their genetic underpinnings to develop new diagnostics and therapeutics. This will become especially important as new high-throughput RNA sequencing technologies increase the numbers of known miRNAs and their targets.”

Read More

Meet a cancer researcher: Hongbo Pang

by on May 4, 2012 at 6:43 am | 0 Comments
Full Article
Hongbo Pang, Ph.D.

Hongbo Pang, Ph.D.

On June 5, 2012, California voters will have an opportunity to consider Proposition 29, also known as the California Cancer Research Act. Prop 29’s goal is to provide funding for cancer research by increasing the tax on a pack of cigarettes by $1. Sanford-Burnham’s Board of Trustees endorsed Prop 29 in September 2011. The University of California Regents has also voted to support it, along with the American Cancer Society, American Lung Association, American Heart Association, Stand Up To Cancer, and the Lance Armstrong Foundation (Livestrong).

We are presenting a series of blog posts to allow you to meet some of our cancer researchers and gain a better understanding of how the projected $735 million generated annually by the passing of Prop 29 would benefit cancer research in California.

Meet Hongbo Pang, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Erkki Ruoslahti, M.D., Ph.D.

Read More

Teaming up to tackle brain tumors

by on May 3, 2012 at 10:19 am | 2 Comments
Full Article
Glioblastoma multiforme (bright ring at right), as seen by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)

Glioblastoma multiforme (bright ring at right), as seen by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)

We are pleased to announce our role in a new multidisciplinary study aimed at finding novel brain cancer therapies. The team, led by the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), includes Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, the Van Andel Research Institute (VARI), and the Intellectual Property & Science division of Thomson Reuters.

A $4.5 million grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will fund the five-year search to find new ways of treating glioblastoma multiforme, the most common and lethal form of brain cancer. Primary brain tumors are among the top 10 causes of cancer death in the U.S., and more than 80,000 Americans have primary malignant brain tumors.

Read More

Meet a cancer researcher: William Stallcup

by on May 1, 2012 at 11:04 am | 0 Comments
Full Article
Weon-Kyoo You, Karolina Kucharova, and Zhigang She, postdoctoral researchers in Dr. Stallcup's laboratory

Weon-Kyoo You, Karolina Kucharova, and Zhigang She, postdoctoral researchers in Dr. Stallcup's laboratory

On June 5, 2012, California voters will have an opportunity to consider Proposition 29, also known as the California Cancer Research Act. Prop 29’s goal is to provide funding for cancer research by increasing the tax on a pack of cigarettes by $1. Sanford-Burnham’s Board of Trustees endorsed Prop 29 in September 2011. The University of California Regents has also voted to support it, along with the American Cancer Society, American Lung Association, American Heart Association, Stand Up To Cancer, and the Lance Armstrong Foundation (Livestrong).

We are presenting a series of blog posts to allow you to meet some of our cancer researchers and gain a better understanding of how the projected $735 million generated annually by the passing of Prop 29 would benefit cancer research in California.

Meet William Stallcup, Ph.D. a professor in Sanford-Burnham’s NCI-designated Cancer Center who has been with the Institute since 1984. He explains what are, in his opinion, the biggest financial challenges currently facing cancer research:

Read More

Debunking two myths about California’s Proposition 29

by on April 26, 2012 at 2:04 pm | 1 comment
Full Article
CCRA

The goal of Proposition 29 (the California Cancer Research Act) is to provide funding for cancer research in California by increasing the tax on a pack of cigarettes by $1. We’d like to take this opportunity to clarify two myths that opponents, including Big Tobacco, are spreading about this initiative:

Read More

Op-ed: How California’s Prop 29 will boost state’s economy

by on April 26, 2012 at 1:23 pm | 2 Comments
Full Article
Kristiina Vuori, M.D., Ph.D., Sanford-Burnham’s president and director of the Institute’s NCI-designated Cancer Center (Photo by Nadia Borowski Scott)

Kristiina Vuori, M.D., Ph.D. (pictured here) and Sherry Lansing co-author a U-T San Diego op-ed piece in support of Proposition 29, the California Cancer Research Act.

In today’s issue of U-T San Diego, Kristiina Vuori, M.D., Ph.D., Sanford-Burnham’s president and director of our National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center, and Sherry Lansing, chair of the University of California Board of Regents, former CEO of Paramount Pictures, and co-founder of Stand Up to Cancer, co-authored an op-ed piece that explains exactly how passage of Proposition 29, the California Cancer Research Act, would both save lives and benefit the state’s economy.

They wrote:

In addition to saving lives and lowering health care costs, passage of Prop 29 will help stimulate the state’s economy by creating and saving jobs in California. The biotechnology industry has been a shining example of stability and growth in our state over the past several decades, and is an area we should be turning to now to help our state recover from economic decline.

Today, California is home to several of the most vibrant life-science research clusters in the world, including 10 of the country’s 66 NCI-designated cancer centers (more than any other state in the nation). The San Francisco Bay Area boasts the oldest and largest biomedical cluster in California and is a world leader in biotechnology. San Diego is known for its biopharmaceutical and medical diagnostics companies, while Orange County has a reputation for medical device inventions and Los Angeles is the place for cutting-edge cancer research and patient care.

As of 2009, the biotechnology industry employed nearly 270,000 Californians. And that number jumps to more than 783,000 jobs when we include everyone employed in academic research, biopharmaceuticals, diagnostics, medical devices, laboratory services and other supporting industries.

Read More

Warren Buffett and the PSA test

by on April 20, 2012 at 12:54 pm | 0 Comments
Full Article
Businessman and philanthropist Warren Buffett was recently diagnosed with stage 1 prostate cancer. (Photo by Mark Hirschey)

Businessman and philanthropist Warren Buffett was recently diagnosed with stage 1 prostate cancer. (Photo by Mark Hirschey)

Earlier this week, billionaire businessman and philanthropist Warren Buffett revealed that he was diagnosed with stage 1 prostate cancer. He credited the good fortune of catching the cancer early—while it’s still very much treatable—to regular PSA testing.

The PSA test measures levels of prostate-specific antigen, a protein produced by the prostate gland, in the blood. Men normally have low PSA levels in their blood, but prostate cancer can increase it, making PSA a useful tumor marker.

How does the test detect PSA? The underlying technology is known as the ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay), a widely used research and diagnostic tool first invented at Stockholm University in 1971 by Dr. Peter Perlmann and Dr. Eva Engvall, who has been a faculty member at Sanford-Burnham since 1979.

Read More

Meet a cancer researcher: Guy Salvesen

by on April 20, 2012 at 8:56 am | 1 comment
Full Article
Guy Salvesen, Ph.D.

Guy Salvesen, Ph.D.

On June 5, 2012, California voters will have an opportunity to consider Proposition 29, also known as the California Cancer Research Act. Prop 29’s goal is to provide funding for cancer research by increasing the tax on a pack of cigarettes by $1. Sanford-Burnham’s Board of Trustees endorsed Prop 29 in September 2011. The University of California Regents has also voted to support it, along with the American Cancer Society, American Lung Association, American Heart Association, Stand Up To Cancer, and the Lance Armstrong Foundation (Livestrong).

We are presenting a series of blog posts to allow you to meet some of our cancer researchers and gain a better understanding of how the projected $735 million generated annually by the passing of Prop 29 would benefit cancer research in California.

Meet Guy Salvesen, Ph.D., professor and director of the Apoptosis & Cell Death Program in Sanford-Burnham’s National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center.

Read More

Breast cancer research: from bench to bedside—and back

by on April 17, 2012 at 6:04 am | 0 Comments
Full Article
Irene Andrulis and Carl Ware discuss the cross-talk between tumors and the immune system

Irene Andrulis and Carl Ware discuss the cross-talk between tumors and the immune system

Sanford-Burnham was recently honored with a visit by Irene Andrulis, Ph.D., a molecular biologist, senior investigator, and co-head of the Fred. A. Litwin Centre for Cancer Genetics at the Lunenfeld Research Institute in Toronto. Andrulis is also a world-renowned breast cancer researcher and her goal is to discover clinically relevant molecular alterations in breast cancer that can be used as prognostic and predictive factors.

So far, Andrulis and her team have been very successful. They developed a genetic test that can identify women with a particular type of breast cancer who are at increased risk of recurrence of the disease. The study was the first prospective study on the importance of a protein called HER2 (short for human epidermal growth factor receptor 2) in breast cancer recurrence. In about one of every five breast cancers, an increase in the number of copies of the gene causes cells to produce excess HER2, which in turn promotes cancer cell growth. In 1998, pharmaceutical company Genentech won FDA approval for a drug called Herceptin, which treats HER2-positive breast cancers by interfering with the receptor.

Andrulis is now interested in exploring the molecular cross-talk between cancer cells and the immune system. That’s partly what brought Andrulis to Sanford-Burnham—to discuss this research avenue with an old friend from graduate school, Carl Ware, Ph.D., director of Sanford-Burnham’s Infectious and Inflammatory Disease Center.

Read More

Meet a cancer researcher: Eric Lau

by on April 13, 2012 at 9:40 am | 0 Comments
Full Article
Eric Lau (right) receiving the 2010 Eric Dudl Scholarship Award from CEO Dr. John Reed

On June 5, 2012, California voters will have an opportunity to consider Proposition 29, also known as the California Cancer Research Act. Prop 29’s goal is to provide funding for cancer research by increasing the tax on a pack of cigarettes by $1. Sanford-Burnham’s Board of Trustees endorsed Prop 29 in September 2011. The University of California Regents has also voted to support it, along with the American Cancer Society, American Lung Association, American Heart Association, Stand Up To Cancer, and the Lance Armstrong Foundation (Livestrong).

We are presenting a series of blog posts to allow you to meet some of our cancer researchers and gain a better understanding of how the projected $735 million generated annually by the passing of Prop 29 would benefit cancer research in California.

Meet Eric Lau, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher in Sanford-Burnham’s NCI-designated Cancer Center.

Read More

Apoya la Prop 29: Ley de Investigación de Cáncer de California

by on April 12, 2012 at 12:59 pm | 0 Comments
Full Article
Prop 29 Spanish

Read the English version of this post here.

El 5 de junio de California tendra las ellecciones primarias, los votantes tendrán la oportunidad de considerar la Proposición 29 de la Ley de Investigación de Cáncer de California (CCRA). CCRA tiene como objetivo proporcionar fondos para la investigación del cáncer mediante el aumento de impuesto de $1 sobre una cajetilla de cigarrillos. Actualmente el impuesto de California sobre un paquete de cigarillos es de solo 87 centavos es uno de los mas bajos de la nacion.

Read More

Drug discovery case study: invadopodia and cancer metastasis

by on April 9, 2012 at 11:21 am | 0 Comments
Full Article
Metastatic cancer cells form invadopodia, shown here as bright red spots. (Image by Begoña Díaz)

Metastatic cancer cells form invadopodia, shown here as bright red spots. (Image by Begoña Díaz)

Editor’s note: this is the first in a series of posts highlighting drug screening studies in our Conrad Prebys Center for Chemical Genomics. Read the second post here.

To metastasize, some types of cancer cells rely on invadopodia, cellular membrane projections that help them “walk” away from the primary tumor. To determine how cells control invadopodia formation, scientists at Sanford-Burnham took advantage of the technology and expertise of the Institute’s Conrad Prebys Center for Chemical Genomics to screen a collection of pharmacologically active compounds to identify those that either promote or inhibit the process.

The study identified several compounds that block invadopodia and found that many of the compounds targeted Cdks, a family of enzymes that were not previously associated with invadopodia. One of these enzymes, Cdk5, is required for the formation and function of invadopodia and for cellular invasion.

Read More

« Older Posts