UNC Lineberger receives prestigious National Cancer Institute GI SPORE grant

The National Cancer Institute has awarded the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center a Specialized Program in Research Excellence – or SPORE – grant in gastrointestinal cancers.

The five-year grant is for approximately $11.5 million; UNC has one of four GI SPOREs in the nation.

Gastrointestinal cancers include tumors of the esophagus, stomach, pancreas, liver, colon and rectum (among others) and represent the second leading cause of cancer death nationwide.

“ This grant will allow us to translate laboratory findings into novel approaches for prevention, early detection and therapy of gastrointestinal cancers,” said Dr. Joel Tepper, the GI SPORE principal investigator. “An understanding of the biology of these tumors will make future advances possible. This means the prospect of improved management and tailored therapies for patients.”

Tepper is a professor and chairman of the School of Medicine’s department of radiation oncology and a member of UNC Lineberger.

“The best science is now conducted collaboratively,” said Dr. Bill Roper, UNC’s vice chancellor for medical affairs and School of Medicine dean, “with laboratory scientists working side by side with clinicians to use the specific information gleaned from new technologies in a way that benefits patients directly. Through this collaboration, more targeted therapies are developed – smarter drugs that aim specifically at a molecular pathway rather than the entire cell.”

This spirit of collaboration has helped development of clinical trials under way that build on a new understanding of how the cancer cell works and the approaches researchers can use to kill tumor cells more effectively, said Tepper. Examples of these compounds are proteosome inhibitors, which limit certain enzymes’ abilities to break down proteins that prevent cancer cells from growing, he added.
Other studies in the SPORE grant will analyze other molecular pathways in these tumors to determine how to alter the activity of those pathways for patient benefit.

“The UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, with its hallmark collaborative approach to cancer research and care, is uniquely positioned to extend this paradigm to benefit the citizens of North Carolina and beyond,” said Roper.

The SPORE program aims to take findings in basic science laboratories and epidemiological studies and apply them in clinical settings and then take information from the clinic and population studies and study that in the lab setting, said Tepper. “The give and take and the interaction among the clinic, laboratory and the population is what makes this grant opportunity so exciting.”

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Click here to read about UNC Lineberger's Gastrointestinal Oncology Program

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