The National Cancer Institute awarded an $11 million grant Wednesday to scientists at the Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy. The grant’s recipients plan to investigate the genomes governing pathways that regulate cell growth—the malfunction of which causes cancer. The researchers hope to discover genomic patterns in the outcomes of cancer cases. The grant is part of the National Institutes of Health’s new focus on analyzing cancer as an intricate biological phenomenon.
The study will analyze cancer on the genomic level and observe the genetic interactions involved in cancer cases. Much of the previous genetic cancer research has analyzed the disease one gene at a time.
“When you study these pathways [in the more common way], you’re understanding them gene-by-gene,” said breast cancer expert Joseph Nevins, professor of molecular genetics and microbiology and one of the principal investigators in the study receiving the funds. “We will be addressing this on a much bigger scale.”
The project represents a collaboration between biology on one hand and statistics and computational sciences on the other; Nevins’ co-principal investigator is Mike West, professor of statistics and decision sciences. The project’s combination of statistics with genetics suits the broader focus, Nevins said, because complex computational methods are required to analyze the data sets generated by genomic analysis of the pathways.
“The whole field of cancer genomics is very involved with computational statistical methods,” West said. “It involves producing models to help in terms of understanding and hopefully predicting cancer growth.”
Long term, this statistical research hopes to document a correlation between the genomic characteristics of the pathways and the severity of the disease in order to discover what genomic traits lead to milder or more treatable forms of cancer. Ideally, these breakthroughs will lead to tailor-made cancer therapy based on individual genomic makeup.
“The two goals are to develop large-scale... studies,” West said. “And then to apply that knowledge to the individual.... It’s all part of a big feedback loop from the basic science to the clinical and back.”
Nevins agreed that understanding the genome of the pathways can lead to a greater understanding of the outcomes of the disease. “Cancer outcomes are all about the fact that different types of cancer develop because of differences in the pathways,” he said.
Nevins said the funds will be primarily used to maintain and perhaps augment the project’s staff of roughly 30 employees. The rest will be spent on infrastructure and materials for the project.
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