Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) and the Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF), along with the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), SU2C’s scientific partner, announced the formation of a new Dream Team dedicated to prostate cancer research.
Dr. Arul M. Chinnaiyan of the Comprehensive Cancer Center and Dr. Charles L. Sawyers of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center will lead the Dream Team project titled “Precision Therapy for Advanced Prostate Cancer.” The Dream Team scientists are drawn from five leading prostate cancer clinical research centers in Ann Arbor, New York, Boston, Seattle and London.
The SU2C-PCF Prostate Dream Team Translational Cancer Research Grant will provide funding of $10 million over a three-year period for a seven-center project including both clinical centers and two research infrastructure sites that will address therapeutic interventions for advanced prostate cancer, with special emphasis on metastatic disease, and deliver near-term patient benefit through investigation by a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional, synergistic Dream Team of expert investigators.
Prostate cancer is the second most common cause of death for men in the United States. According to PCF, one man dies every 18 minutes from this disease. In addition, a new case occurs every 2.4 minutes. More than 2 million American men are currently living with prostate cancer and more than 16 million men are affected worldwide.
“Through this unique partnership with PCF, we will focus critically needed research on advanced prostate cancer,” says Sherry Lansing, one of SU2C’s co-founders. “Our collective goal is to produce personalized treatment approaches that will begin to benefit patients in the next few years.”
“We are excited to announce and fund this Dream Team in partnership with Stand Up To Cancer. Healthy competition for the prestigious research award brought out tremendous innovation — well beyond what the National Cancer Institute or Department of Defense is currently funding,” says Dr. Jonathan Simons, president and CEO of the Prostate Cancer Foundation. “We are highly confident that the cross-institutional teams of researchers led by Drs. Chinnaiyan and Sawyers will significantly fast-forward actionable therapeutic sciences for men with treatment-resistant metastatic prostate cancer.”
Chinnaiyan is a clinical pathologist and investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, S.P. Hicks endowed professor of pathology and professor of urology at the Medical School, and an American Cancer Society research professor. He also serves as the inaugural director of the Michigan Center for Translational Pathology. The Chinnaiyan laboratory has focused on functional genomic, proteomic, metabolomic and bioinformatic approaches to study cancer for the purposes of understanding tumor biology, as well as to discover clinical biomarkers. Chinnaiyan also has been the recipient of PCF career-development funding and research awards since 2001.
Chinnaiyan’s lab was the first to identify a gene fusion that occurs in half of all prostate cancers. This finding is the basis for the research that will be done as part of this new grant.
“Utilizing this Dream Team grant, we will be able to bring together great scientists and clinicians from around the world to join in the fight against metastatic prostate cancer. We hope this unique model of research will lead to patient benefit in the short term,” Chinnaiyan says.
Sawyers is chair of the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. Additionally, he is a professor in the cell and developmental biology program and the department of medicine at the Joan and Sanford Weill Graduate School of Medical Sciences of Cornell University, also in New York. Sawyers’ PCF-funded research in prostate cancer molecular pharmacology defined upregulation of androgen receptor signaling as the primary mechanism of resistance to hormone therapy, resulting in the discovery of the antiandrogen MDV3100 that was recently shown to prolong survival in men with metastatic prostate cancer. Sawyers has been a recipient of PCF research award support since 1996.
