When your mission is as big as ending cancer, there\u2019s never a shortage of work to do. There is a seemingly unending list of questions that need to be raised and investigated \u2014 and a plethora of brilliant minds willing to take them on.<\/p>\n
At a place like UT MD Anderson, there is also no shortage of \u201cgood science.\u201d The challenge is identifying where we can make the greatest impact.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re fortunate to have a strong foundation to build upon here at UT MD Anderson. The spirit of collaboration between our labs and clinics is unlike anywhere else. We can leverage this along with our culture of innovation to accelerate high-risk, high-reward cancer research, addressing the most pressing issues and challenges faced by our patients to directly deliver breakthroughs.<\/p>\n
The shift away from disease-specific team science<\/p>\n
Gradually, we\u2019ve changed how we build our collaborative teams. Previously, everything was organized around specific diseases, like pancreatic cancer<\/a> or leukemia<\/a>, for example. But illuminations in biology have revealed that diverse tumors share deep underlying traits. Targeting commonalities like universal cellular mechanisms, including immune evasion and metabolic shifts to name a few, yields a greater impact, rather than studying single organ cancers independently. And focusing on technology and data shifts like the power of multi-omics<\/a> or artificial intelligence (AI) can provide us with more transformative results.<\/p>\n The problems we\u2019re facing in oncology right now<\/p>\n Given the extraordinary combination of resources, talent and infrastructure built to drive team science , and, above all, the critical unmet needs of patients we serve, we\u2019ve reoriented some of our research at UT MD Anderson to address questions that stretch across multiple cancer types, multiple departments, divisions and labs.<\/p>\n We gave a lot of thought to what are the hard problems that we\u2019re facing at this moment and landed on these seven themes:<\/p>\n The resistance problem \u2014 and how to break it: Why do some cancers not respond to targeted therapies? Introducing the Breakthroughs Discovery Program<\/p>\n To address these research themes, UT MD Anderson created the Breakthrough Discoveries Program. This program provides funding and resources for ambitious, high-risk, high-reward science requiring multidisciplinary teams and whose work could yield huge impacts for our patients.<\/p>\n The competition for this opportunity was incredibly fierce, and the scientific review, ultimately conducted by an external scientific advisory board, was extremely rigorous. The challenge wasn\u2019t finding outstanding science. It was identifying the ideas with greatest potential to transform cancer care \u2013 that is, those where this unique approach to driving high risk\/reward science may make the most positive impact for patients.<\/p>\n In mid-August, I had the honor of announcing the first class of recipients of the program.<\/p>\n The following Breakthrough Discoveries Program recipients will receive up to $3 million per year for the next three years:<\/p>\n Humam Kadara, Ph.D.<\/a>, Seyed Moghaddam, M.D.<\/a>, and Jianjun Zhang, M.D., Ph.D.<\/a>: Triple-I Intercept: Precision Interception of Lung Cancer Evolution Driven by Injury, Inflammation and IL-1 Signaling: Understand the link between injury and inflammation to lung adenocarcinoma, the most common type of non-small cell lung cancer<\/a>, develop biomarkers to guide the management of early lesions, and establish clinical strategies for interrupting the development of this cancer.\u00a0 One Breakthrough Discoveries Program Impact Seed Award recipient will receive up to $1 million per year for the next three years:<\/p>\n Lilie Lin, M.D.<\/a>,\u200b and\u00a0Heiko Enderling, Ph.D.<\/a>:\u00a0Decoding \u201cLuck\u201d in Cervical Cancer Radiation Therapy: A Spatially Explicit Digital Twin Program to Personalize Care and Improve Patient-Specific Outcomes:\u00a0Develop a platform for delivering highly targeted radiation treatment using a digital twin<\/a> framework to generate patient-specific recurrence risk predictions and risk-adaptive treatment strategies.<\/p>\n The work starts now, but really, it\u2019s been building for years. The approach to team science has been more than a decade in the making, and the questions are some of the most paramount in cancer research presently. At UT MD Anderson, our researchers truly have the opportunity to help patients live longer and better. And now we have the privilege of helping our talented researchers to accelerate progress for our patients.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nCancer interrupted: How do we stop early cancer or premalignancy before it starts?
\nBeyond the T cell: Looking through the tumor microenvironment<\/a> \u2013 the environment that makes up the tumor \u2013 to see what other factors could be targeted to benefit patients.\u00a0
\nThe cancer genome as therapeutic vulnerability: Looking backward at the cancer genome to determine what features could be leveraged against tumor cells. \u00a0
\nCooling the toxicity, not the response: How do we limit toxicities and the symptoms and side effects of cancer treatment without limiting the cancer response?
\nWhat is lucky? Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to model and predict which patients will respond to treatment.
\nSmall numbers, big problem: Tackling the challenges of improving strategies for rare cancer patient management.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nSimona Colla, Ph.D.<\/a>, and Andrea Viale, Ph.D.<\/a>: CROSSROADS: CROSS-tissue RegeneratiOn Aberrancy Drives Systemic Precancer Escape: Define the fundamental biology of precancer cell states and what\u2019s known as somatic mosaicism, when mutations cause genetically distinct populations of cells to coexist within the same individual.
\nLauren\u00a0Byers, M.D<\/a>.,\u00a0and\u00a0Carl Gay, M.D., Ph.D.<\/a>:\u00a0Dual Specificity CAR T Cells for SCLC and Other Rare Neuroendocrine Carcinomas: Launch a new cell therapy as a potential new treatment for small cell lung cancer and test it as a possibility for other rare cancers.
\nSteve Cho, M.D.<\/a>, and Phuoc Tran, M.D., Ph.D.<\/a>: RADTAC: A Subcellularly Targeted Anti-CD70 Radiotheranostic\u00a0to Overcome Therapeutic Resistance in Kidney Cancer: Develop a new treatment for patients with renal cell carcinoma<\/a>, the most common adult kidney cancer, that have already failed with other treatments, using RADiopharmaceutical TArgeted Chimera (RADTAC), a drug discovery and radiotheranostic platform designed to precisely deliver radiotherapy inside the cancer cell\u2019s nucleus invited at UT MD Anderson.
\nKristy Brock, Ph.D.<\/a>, and Bruno Odisio, M.D., Ph.D.<\/a>\u200b: Replacing Uncertainty with Learning: PREcision DIagnostics & Clinical Trajectory Prediction for Colorectal Liver Metastases (PREDICT-CLM): Create a large, secure database that combines patient information, medical test results and treatment decisions\u00a0made by physicians, resulting in a digital twin called PREDICT-CLM.<\/p>\n