Known as the Pacific Northwest Prostate Cancer Research SPORE (short for Specialized Program of Research Excellence), the initiative will involve more than 50 investigators in Seattle and Vancouver, B.C.
Participating institutions in Seattle are Fred Hutchinson, the University of Washington and the Institute for Systems Biology. Vancouver partners are the University of British Columbia and its affiliate, The Prostate Centre at Vancouver General Hospital.
The strong history of collaboration among these institutions - themselves all major contributors to prostate-cancer research - was key to getting the grant, said principal investigator Paul Lange, M.D., professor and chair of urology at the UW School of Medicine and an affiliate investigator in Fred Hutchinson's Public Health Sciences Division.
"This highly competitive award exemplifies the high caliber of prostate-cancer research among the major medical-research institutions in the Pacific Northwest and the significant ongoing collaborations among researchers from each of the participating institutions," Lange said.
During the past decade, for example, a working group of Seattle prostate-cancer investigators has met regularly to collaborate on projects focused on understanding the hereditary and lifestyle factors behind prostate cancer and developing innovative technologies to unravel the genetic mechanisms of the disease. Fruits of their labor include mapping the region of a gene associated with inherited prostate cancer and primary brain cancer, as well as better understanding the genes expressed in the more common forms of prostate cancer.
"The close relationship between these institutions and our long-standing track record of success was crucial to getting the grant," echoes co-principal investigator Janet Stanford, Ph.D., a member of Fred Hutchinson's Public Health Sciences Division and director of its Prostate Cancer Research Program.
The Pacific Northwest Prostate Cancer SPORE grant follows closely on the heels of another major prostate-cancer research coup for the Seattle researchers; in July, the University of Washington was awarded $10.5 million from the National Institutes of Health to lead a multi-center, five-year investigation into the basic causes of why prostate cancer metastasizes, or spreads, to the bone. Participating institutions in this effort are Fred Hutchinson and the Institute for Systems Biology, co-founded by former UW geneticist Leroy Hood, M.D., Ph.D.
Together, the two hefty grants, totaling $23.2 million, give area researchers unprecedented opportunities in their ongoing efforts to better understand prostate cancer and develop improved therapies, particularly for men with recurrent or advanced disease. "There hasn't been a lot of improvement in the survival of men with advanced prostate cancer over the past 30 years, so to focus on understanding the factors that may contribute to progression from clinically less aggressive to more aggressive disease is important if we're to develop therapies that will effectively treat these men," said Stanford, also a professor of epidemiology at the UW School of Public Health and Community Medicine.
As such, the overarching goal of the consortium is to bring, more quickly and efficiently, laboratory discoveries to patient bedsides throughout the Pacific Northwest. A variety of clinical partners throughout the Northwest will recruit and enroll patients for research studies to test the therapies that emerge. They will include the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance (the oncology patient-care arm of Fred Hutchinson, UW Academic Medical Center and Children's Hospital and Regional Medical Center) and the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System in Seattle; the Oregon Cancer Institute/Oregon Health & Science University in Portland; and Vancouver General Hospital/University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Prostate cancer is the most common male cancer; an estimated 1.5 million Americans live with the disease, which affects one in six and is the second-leading cause of death from cancer in men. An estimated 189,000 men will be diagnosed this year and about 30,200 will die of the disease, according to the American Cancer Society.
Due to the prevalence of prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, screening, the majority of men are diagnosed early, before the disease has spread beyond the prostate. Only 6 percent of men first are diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer that has migrated to the bones. While initial diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer is rare, recurrence after primary therapy is not. Several population-based studies have found that among men under age 70 who are diagnosed with localized prostate cancer, between 20 percent and 30 percent will develop a recurrence and many of them will die from the disease, Stanford said. Once the disease spreads to the bone, the median survival is 36 months.
Male hormones, or androgens, are known to fuel prostate-cancer growth, so current treatments for advanced prostate cancer focus on slowing the progression of the disease through surgical or chemical castration, also known as androgen-deprivation therapy. Prostate cancer consists of both "hormone-sensitive" and "hormone-insensitive" cells, and everyone's ratio of such cells is different. Eliminating the body's major source of androgens, such as testosterone, interrupts the pathway of hormone production that speeds the growth of hormone-sensitive cancer cells. While such therapy works for a while to increase the length of life, it is not considered curative, as androgen deprivation is only effective in controlling the growth of the cancer cells that feed on male hormones. Eventually, these hormone-sensitive cells are crowded out by hormone-insensitive cancer cells, which don't depend on male hormones to proliferate. Improving the treatment options for men faced with recurrent prostate cancer that no longer responds to androgen-deprivation therapy is the unifying mission behind the consortium's four scientific projects, all of which seek to apply the insights of laboratory and epidemiological research to better understand how and why prostate cancer spreads. Below are brief descriptions of each project:
These projects will be supported by an infrastructure of SPORE-funded research cores that will provide resources and expertise in a variety of areas: administration, bioinformatics, biostatistics, specimen collection and tissue banking, and clinical-trial design, recruitment and management. Below are the cores and their leaders:
Established by Congress in 1992, the organ-based SPORE program was created to promote collaboration between basic and applied scientists to speed the testing of new approaches to the prevention, early detection, diagnosis and treatment of a variety of cancers. Other recipients of prostate SPORE funding this year are Harvard University and the University of California at Los Angeles.
The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, home of two Nobel Prize laureates, is an independent, nonprofit research institution dedicated to the development and advancement of biomedical technology to eliminate cancer and other potentially fatal diseases. Fred Hutchinson receives more funding from the National Institutes of Health than any other independent U.S. research center. Recognized internationally for its pioneering work in bone-marrow transplantation, the center's four scientific divisions collaborate to form a unique environment for conducting basic and applied science. Fred Hutchinson is the only National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center in the Pacific Northwest and is one of 41 nationwide. For more information, visit the center's Web site at www.fhcrc.org .
About the University of Washington
The University of Washington's faculty includes five Nobel Prize-winners, five MacArthur Fellows, and more than 40 members of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences. Its highly regarded School of Medicine has been ranked first in the nation in training primary-care physicians, and several of its graduate and professional programs are rated among the top 10 in their fields. Since 1975, the UW has been among the top public universities in receipt of federal research funds. Web site: www.washington.edu .
About the Institute for Systems Biology
Systems biology is an emerging discipline that takes a more global look at complex biological functions. The Institute for Systems Biology is one of the most visible and pioneering research organizations in the world dedicated to this new approach that requires the integration of science, technology and bioinformatics in ways that would have been impossible only a few years ago. The Institute is also committed to pioneering new approaches to science education and increasing public awareness of biotechnology issues.
The Institute was founded by Dr. Leroy Hood, Dr. Ruedi Aebersold and Dr. Alan Aderem in 2000 and rapidly grew to a faculty of eight and a staff of more than 170. Hood, the Institute's president and director, led the development of the automated DNA-sequencing technology that enabled the Human Genome Project and was among the small group that advocated for the effort in 1985. Aderem, a prominent immunologist and cell biologist and pioneer in the study of innate immunity, has provided scientists with fundamental insights into the functioning of the macrophage. Aebersold, who is widely recognized for his work in analytical protein biochemistry and proteomics, leads a research group at the ISB that is focused on developing new methods and technologies for understanding the structure, function and control of complex biological systems. Web site: www.systemsbiology.org .
About the University of British Columbia and The Prostate Centre at Vancouver Hospital
The Prostate Centre at Vancouver General Hospital, an affiliate of the University of British Columbia, is the largest comprehensive research and treatment centre of its kind in Canada with a focus exclusively on prostate disease. Home to Canada's largest gene array facility and Western Canada's only Training and Education Centre for Prostate Research, the Centre is a University of British Columbia Academic Centre of Excellence. The Prostate Centre is one of three centres of excellence located at Vancouver General Hospital, the primary adult referral and teaching hospital in Western Canada and a part of the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, the largest network of health organizations and services in Canada. Prostate Centre Web site: www.prostatecentre.com . UBC researchers, who conduct more than 4,000 investigations annually, attracted $260 million in research funding in 2001/2002. UBC Web site: www.ubc.ca .
The SPORE grant also will fund up to four pilot projects each year as part of a developmental-research program to support innovative translational research aimed at improving survival in prostate-cancer patients. Research proposals will be solicited from investigators within the four participating institutions.
About the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center