The Sanford-Burnham Science Blog
We’ve made remarkable progress in the war on cancer over the past four decades, but we haven’t won yet. One in two men and one in three women are still expected to get cancer at some point in their lifetimes.
This World Cancer Day, February 4, stand up and do something about it.
Forty years after the National Cancer Act was signed into law, the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) unveiled its first-ever report on progress in cancer research today. The AACR Cancer Progress Report 2011 calls on the general public and lawmakers to intensify their efforts in supporting cancer and biomedical research. (Read the full report or AACR’s press release.)
Decades of fundamental knowledge about cancer have led to incredible scientific and technological breakthroughs. However, due to the relatively flat funding at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) since 2003, both the momentum gained and future progress of cancer research are now seriously threatened.
The AACR Cancer Progress Report 2011 urges Congress to provide the NIH and NCI with sustained budget increases of at least five percent above the biomedical inflation rate. This level of support will ensure the future scientific advances needed to capitalize on past research investments, spur innovation, and make a difference in the lives of people worldwide.
Dr. Kristiina Vuori and Dr. John Reed are working to find new ways to help cancer cells die.
May is National Cancer Research Month, created by Congress in 2007 to recognize the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) for its contributions to the field. To honor AACR and highlight some of the important cancer research being done at Sanford-Burnham, throughout May we posted a series of articles on the ongoing work in our National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center. The vast majority of this research is made possible by funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which includes the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
Cells contain a complex mixture of opposing forces striving for balance. When these mechanisms work properly, cells are healthy. However, if one side gains the upper hand, balance is lost and disease can result.
Programmed cell death, or apoptosis, is a critical cellular quality control mechanism regulated by small squads of pro- and anti-apoptotic proteins. In healthy cells, these opposing mechanisms maintain the life/death balance. However, they can also go awry in a number of diseases. In particular, cancers often over-express anti-apoptotic proteins, giving them a measure of immortality.
Sanford-Burnham’s NCI-designated Cancer Center has led the way on cell death research. In a recent paper, Dr. Guy Salvesen, who directs the Apoptosis and Cell Death Program, and colleagues showed how an enzyme, caspase-8, can teeter between advancing or defeating apoptosis, depending on factors in the cell. Caspases are critical regulators of apoptosis, and understanding their function could lead to new treatments.
Dr. Elena Pasquale studyies Eph receptors.
May is National Cancer Research Month, created by Congress in 2007 to recognize the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) for its contributions to the field. To honor AACR and highlight some of the important cancer research being done at Sanford-Burnham, we will be posting a series of articles on the ongoing work in our National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center. The vast majority of this research is made possible by funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which includes the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
Fighting cancer is one of the most difficult problems humans have ever tackled. Cancer is versatile: it grows rapidly, adapts to difficult environments and hides well. Defeating it will not be easy, but scientists are also taking a versatile approach—one that involves collaborations between many disciplines.
One such collaboration combines the talents of Dr. Elena Pasquale, a biologist, Dr. Maurizio Pellecchia, a chemist and Dr. Paul Fisher, who directs the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University. Dr. Pasquale has spent years studying the interplay between Eph cell surface receptors and ephrin proteins. Eph receptors are like antennae protruding from the surface of a cell. They foster cell communication by binding to ephrin proteins on the surfaces of neighboring cells. Eph receptors also appear more often in cancer cells than normal ones. Dr. Pasquale and Dr. Pellecchia began to wonder if they could use this deep understanding of Eph/ephrin interactions to create a compound that attaches selectively to Eph and combine it with medicine—creating a guided missile with a potent anti-cancer payload.
Dr. Jorge Moscat and Dr. Maria Diaz-Meco
May is National Cancer Research Month, created by Congress in 2007 to recognize the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) for its contributions to the field. To honor AACR and highlight some of the important cancer research being done at Sanford-Burnham, we will be posting a series of articles on the ongoing work in our National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center. The vast majority of this research is made possible by funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which includes the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
Fifty years ago, cancer biologists were convinced that understanding cancer metabolism would lead to a cure, until discoveries about cancer genetics shifted the research focus in other directions. But now the pendulum is swinging back , renewing interest in metabolism’s role in cancer.
Dr. Jorge Moscat and Dr. Maria Diaz-Meco, who both recently arrived at Sanford-Burnham from the University of Cincinnati, have been working together for more than twenty years to understand the mechanisms that allow cancer cells to grow at such a breakneck pace. Their investigations have led them to a network of proteins characterized by having PB1 domains. This network of proteins controls inflammation, how cells communicate with each other, and how they sense nutrients—all key drivers of cancer growth.
For example, the PB1-containing scaffold protein p62 regulates an enzyme called protein kinase C zeta (PKCZ), which is often missing in human cancers. PKCZ is a tumor suppressor that prevents inflammation and ensures that cells remain sensitive to nutrient levels. Cells without PKCZ get reprogrammed to endure food scarcity.
“If they lack this gene, they don’t care if glucose is unavailable,” says Dr. Moscat, “they just use other nutrients.”
Neurosphere
May is National Cancer Research Month, created by Congress in 2007 to recognize the American Association of Cancer Research (AACR) for its contributions to the field. To honor AACR and highlight some of the important cancer research being done at Sanford-Burnham, we will be posting a series of articles on the ongoing work in our National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center. The vast majority of this research is made possible by funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which includes the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
Context can change everything. Driving 65 miles per hour on the highway is perfectly fine, but the same speed in a neighborhood could be deadly. The same is true in biology. Processes that are necessary in one context can be harmful in another.
Dr. Robert Wechsler-Reya, who directs the Tumor Development Program in Sanford-Burnham’s Cancer Center, has spent many years studying how “good” processes can also cause disease. He is particularly interested in how mechanisms that are normal in embryonic development can cause cancer when turned on in children and adults.
“We work on the relationship between development and cancer, particularly in the brain,” says Dr. Wechsler-Reya. “We’re interested in how normal stem cells and progenitor cells make decisions like when to divide, when to differentiate and what to differentiate into. We’re interested in how those decisions go wrong in cancer.”
Dr. Kristiina Vuori, Sanford-Burnham’s president and director of our NCI-designated Cancer Center, was recently elected to the Board of Directors of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), the world’s oldest and largest professional organization focused on advancing cancer research. AACR promotes all aspects of cancer research, including basic, translational and clinical research into the origin, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Founded in 1907, the organization has more than 27,000 members in 80 countries, and accelerates progress toward cancer prevention and treatment through research, education, communication and collaboration.
“This is a time of exciting progress in cancer research and the opportunity to translate that progress to patient benefit,” says Dr. Vuori. “ I am honored to have been elected to the AACR Board and excited for the opportunity to work with the AACR and the whole cancer community to further build on this extraordinary momentum.”
Tonight, Stand Up 2 Cancer will air on ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, HBO, MLB Network, Showtime, VH1 and other networks. Produced in collaboration with the American Association for Cancer Research, this exciting television event will raise funds and awareness to support important research and take the fight against cancer to the next level.
This is a difficult fight, but one we must win. According to the National Cancer Institute, cancer causes one of every four deaths in the United States and one death every minute. Every minute, three new cancer cases are diagnosed. The lifetime risk of developing cancer is one in two for men–one in three for women. However, there is also progress and hope. The five-year cancer survival rate is 64 percent, compared to 50 percent in 1975.
Since 1981, Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute has been a National Cancer Institute-designated basic research Cancer Center. Each day, hundreds of scientists use the world’s most sophisticated research methods to uncover cancer’s secrets and develop new ways to treat it.
To learn more, visit the Sanford-Burnham cancer page.
National Cancer Research Monthis an important reminder that cancer is an insidious enemy. It’s always evolving. In order to shut cancer down and develop new therapies and cures, scientists have to attack it at its most fundamental level, and from as many angles as possible.
Sanford-Burnham has spent decades working against cancer. We were founded in 1976 as the La Jolla Cancer Research Foundation and have held a basic research cancer center designation from the National Cancer Institute for almost 30 years.
Our researchers are guided by the understanding that the most substantial breakthroughs come from studying the basic mechanisms of cells and the molecules that comprise them. The more strategies we adopt in the fight against cancer, the more opportunities we will have to develop new medicines. The following are examples of what Sanford-Burnham scientists study to continue that fight.