National Cancer Institute SPORE grant brings together researchers from area institutions
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has awarded Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) an $11.5 million, five-year SPORE grant to focus on cancers of the kidney. Michael Atkins, MD, Deputy Director of BIDMC's Division of Hematology/Oncology, will oversee the grant, which involves collaborations with Brigham and Women's Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Massachusetts General Hospital via the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center.
As the only NCI-funded SPORE focused on cancers of the kidney, this grant aims to improve detection, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of kidney cancer, which affects about 54,000 Americans each year and causes approximately 14,000 deaths. SPORE grants (Specialized Program of Research Excellence) are designed to promote interdisciplinary and translational research that rapidly moves scientific discoveries to a clinical setting to directly benefit patients. This grant is a renewal of a previous $13.3 million kidney cancer SPORE awarded to Atkins and his team of collaborators in 2003.
"This renewed support enables our team to maintain the momentum that was established over the past five years and continue to make tremendous progress in our research. Being the only kidney cancer SPORE, we have an opportunity and a responsibility to lead the effort to develop better approaches to detect and treat cancers of the kidney," says Atkins, who also directs the Cutaneous Oncology and Biologic Therapy programs and the Cancer Clinical Trials Office in BIDMC's Division of Hematology/Oncology.
"The renewal of our SPORE grant is validation from the NCI that the past five years of funding were productive and that our proposals for future research are also highly meritorious," he adds.
This grant, awarded in August 2009 and again headquartered at BIDMC, includes five main projects which are supported by three cores. Each project is jointly directed by a team comprising both basic scientists and clinical investigators, all of whom are members of the Kidney Cancer Program of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DFHCC). The Kidney Cancer Program encompasses research that spans from the basic laboratory to the clinic, from pediatric to adult cancers, and from detection and diagnosis to selection of appropriate treatment. Atkins, who also leads this DFHCC program, describes the SPORE as its "translational engine," with much of the new work building upon groundbreaking discoveries made during the previous SPORE, including several early phase clinical trials testing novel approaches for the treatment of specific types of kidney tumors.