Two neurologists at Brigham and Women’s Hospital will receive funding for ALS research under a new initiative in neurotherapeutics from the National Institutes of Health.
Gregory Cuny and Marcie Glicksman, both assistant professors of neurology at Brigham and Women’s, and Chien Liang Lin, of Ohio State University, are one of seven project teams being funded by the NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research.
The Blueprint Neurotherapeutics Network will serve as a resource enabling investigators to develop new drugs for nervous system disorders and prepare them for clinical trials, and will receive up to $50 million over five years.
Project teams supported by the BNN will receive research funding for projects aimed at treating conditions such as vision loss, neurodegenerative disease and depression, plus access to millions of dollars worth of services normally available only to pharmaceutical companies. Pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry consultants will assist investigators throughout the drug development process, from chemical optimization, to biological testing, to advancing the drug into early-stage clinical trials.
“The investigators get access to the same resources and expertise that drug companies have,” said Jill Heemskerk, lead contact for the BNN. “The investigators will retain intellectual property rights for any drugs they develop through the network. Our hope is that pharmaceutical companies will license the most promising drugs and invest in the clinical studies needed to bring them to market.”
Cuny, Glicksman and Lin’s project strategy consists of slowing the onset of paralysis in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis by reducing toxic levels of the brain chemical glutamate. The compounds under study work by stimulating EAAT2, a protein that enables cells to essentially vacuum up excess glutamate.
Harvard School of Public Health has been awarded a five-year grant from The National Cancer Institute for a new research center to study the relationship between obesity and cancer. The center is part of a new multicenter cooperative research initiative, called Transdisciplinary Research on Energetics and Cancer, announced June 28, 2011, by the NCI.
Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at HSPH and co-director of the Program in Obesity Epidemiology and Prevention, is the principal investigator for the Harvard TREC Center.
The Harvard TREC Center is one of four research centers awarded $45 million over five years. The others are at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; University of California San Diego; and Washington University, St. Louis. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, is the TREC Coordinating Center.
The TREC centers will integrate the study of diet, weight and physical activity and their effects on energy balance and cancer, and will provide training opportunities for researchers. Projects range from a study on the mechanisms of energy balance to the behavioral, socio-cultural and environmental influences on nutrition, physical activity and weight in cancer survivors and other high-risk populations. (Read the full NCI announcement.)
The Harvard TREC Center will draw on the multidisciplinary expertise of the faculty of Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School, the Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Children’s Hospital Boston, Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute and the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies.
The Harvard center is designed to increase the understanding of the determinants of obesity from the molecular to societal level and across the lifespan, to clarify the biological links of obesity with cancer risk and survivorship, to translate these findings into actionable behavioral interventions, to train the next generation of investigators in energetics (the study of energy balance) and cancer, and to disseminate this knowledge and develop public health strategies to reduce risk of obesity and cancer.
The Forsyth Institute’s Institutional Postdoctoral Training Award in Oral Health Research, an NIH T32 National Research Service Award, has been renewed for an additional five years. This grant, under the leadership of Dan Smith, will support the training of advanced post-doctoral fellows who are poised to transition to faculty positions within the next three years. The grant ($1.27 million) will fund a total of 21 training years, or approximately 10 trainees, over the period. The program is intended to provide a pipeline of talent with the potential to eventually move into staff positions.
Beth Israel Deaconess Scientists Receive $2 Million From Prostate Cancer Foundation
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center researchers Martin Sanda and Steven Balk have been awarded Challenge Awards of $1 million each from the Prostate Cancer Foundation to lead two cross-disciplinary teams of investigators in their pursuit of new treatments for patients with advanced prostate cancer.
The PCF Challenge Awards will support a total of 10 scientific projects nationwide; Beth Israel Deaconess is the only institution to receive funding for two projects.
“With reductions in federal funding for prostate cancer research, it’s imperative for the PCF to seek the most promising research ideas,” said PCF executive vice president and chief science officer Howard Soule, “and fund them with the goal of changing clinical practice and improving outcomes for patients with advanced prostate cancer.”
The research team assembled by Sanda, director of the Prostate Cancer Program at Beth Israel Deaconess and associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School, is combining nanotechnology and cancer immunology expertise in developing a vaccine to treat prostate cancer by boosting patients’ immune systems.
Sanda’s Prostate Cancer Nanoparticle Vaccine Consortium is co-led by M. Simo Arredouani of Beth Israel Deaconess Department of Surgery, Joseph DeSimone of the University of North Carolina Department of Chemistry, and Charles Drake of the Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmell Cancer Center.
“Our work represents a synergistic collaboration that brings together some of the best doctors and scientists in the fields of prostate cancer, nanotechnology and cancer immunotherapy across three separate leading hospitals,” Sanda said. “Such collaborative team science is the cornerstone for continued progress in developing effective new cancer therapies.”
In the second Beth Israel Deaconess PCF Challenge Award, a scientific team led by Balk, an investigator in Beth Israel Deaconess Division of Hematology/Oncology and professor of medicine at HMS, will work to identify and exploit mechanisms of response and resistance to therapeutics directed at the androgen receptor pathway.
“We hope to learn why patients invariably become resistant to abiraterone acetate, a treatment used in advanced prostate cancer cases following chemotherapy,” Balk said. “If we can determine the reasons why this treatment eventually stops working, we will be better equipped to design more effective and targeted therapy for metastatic treatment-resistant disease, the lethal stage of prostate cancer responsible for approximately 30,000 deaths per year.”
Co-investigators on the Balk project include Beth Israel Deaconess researchers Glenn Bubley and Xin Yuan; and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute investigators Toni Choueiri, Phillip Kantoff, Christopher Sweeney and Mary-Ellen Taplin. Co-principal investigators include Peter Nelson of the University of Washington/Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Trevor Penning of the University of Pennsylvania.
Forsyth Institute and Harvard School of Dental Medicine research associate Xiaozhe Han recently received a two-year grant of $542,575 for his project “Regulation of B-Cell Apoptosis by TLR Signaling in Periodontal Disease.”
Han’s research is examining the molecular mechanisms that control immune cell-mediated periodontal bone resorption in periodontitis for preventive and therapeutic purposes.
An estimated 80 percent of American adults have some form of periodontal disease, causing oral bone destruction and ultimately leading to tooth loss. The expenditures for treating these conditions exceed $6 billion per year. Current treatments do not offer complete amelioration of bone loss around teeth because they do not inhibit the biological causes of periodontal bone loss.
Han is working to gain new knowledge about host immune response in periodontal disease pathogenesis and contribute to development of therapeutic strategies that are effective in preventing tooth loss in people with periodontal disease.
