The Landon Foundation-AACR INNOVATOR Award for Cancer Prevention Research was established to recognize the outstanding achievement of an early-career assistant professor in the field of cancer prevention, and to provide support for cancer prevention research of significant scientific merit in any discipline across the continuum of research. The goals of the program are to: encourage younger investigators to pursue cancer prevention research of significant scientific merit; provide the support necessary to sustain and enhance highly meritorious cancer prevention research; foster interactions between and among cancer scientists and disseminate the scientific knowledge about cancer prevention research; and contribute to a global impact against cancer.
2011 GRANTEE
Megan J. Huchko, M.D., M.P.H.Assistant Professor, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
Cervical Cancer Screening with a Novel Biomarker in HIV-infected Women
"Cervical cancer has a disproportionate impact on women in developing countries. This has historically been due to socioeconomic disparities and poor health care infrastructure, however, in the last two decades, the HIV epidemic has worked to synergistically increase the biologic and health care factors associated with increased cervical cancer incidence and mortality in these countries. The impact has been most dramatic in sub-Saharan African countries such as Kenya, where cervical cancer is the most common cancer killer among women. Cervical cancer prevention efforts that have reduced the incidence of cervical cancer to close to zero in resource-rich countries are costly and not available in most low-resource countries. Novel testing and treatment strategies that can be carried out in low-resource settings are urgently needed to prevent cervical cancer in these countries, especially among the growing population of HIV-infected women. Protein biomarker detection in the cervix has the potential to increase the accuracy in diagnosis of precancerous cervical lesions. Our research team is in the final phase of a pilot study to test the feasibility and accuracy of a biochemical assay for the protein p16INK4a for screening among HIV-infected women in western Kenya. If the test performance is favorable, a biochemical assay could be developed as of a point-of-care screening test, which would be ideal for a low-resource setting. Our ongoing work is the first study looking at the performance of p16INK4a in HIV-infected women and the first to look at the performance of the biochemical assay in a low-resource setting. The Landon Foundation-AACR Innovator award will allow us to apply our pilot study data in a larger trial to evaluate the clinical performance of p16INK4a among HIV-infected women. This work will advance the field of cervical cancer screening in low-resource settings, specifically among the vulnerable population of HIV-infected women. This could exponentially increase options for cervical cancer screening in low-resource settings and add another choice for screening women in all parts of the world."
Top of Page
2010 GRANTEE
Samuel W. French, M.D., Ph.D.Assistant Professor, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
Quercetin: A New Hepatocellular Carcinoma Prevention Paradigm
"Chronic hepatitis C viral (HCV) infection is the number one causative agent of cirrhosis necessitating liver transplantation and is the major cause of the recent doubling of hepatocellular carcinoma in the United States. We have identified heat shock proteins (HSP)s 40 and 70 as cellular proteins that interact with the HCV protein NS5A and are important for HCV infection. We have further demonstrated that heat shock protein synthesis inhibitors (HSPSI)s efficiently reduce viral infection with no toxic effect in cell culture. One of the HSPSIs we identified, Quercetin, is a naturally occurring bioflavonoid that has shown no significant side effects in patients in other published studies. Therefore, we will conduct a dose escalation clinical trial primarily to determine the highest safe dose of Quercetin in patients who have chronic HCV. We will also determine if Quercetin treatment lowers viral levels in the blood. These studies have the potential to lead to non-toxic treatments of chronic HCV infection thereby reducing the incidence of cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. I need to thank the unwavering support of the UCLA Department of Pathology. I must also thank Drs. Asim Dasgupta, Ren Sun, Vaithilingaraja Arumugaswami and Santanu Raychaudhuri who were absolutely essential in providing me reagents and guidance that allowed me to establish my hepatitis C/hepatocellular carcinoma research program. The Landon Foundation-AACR INNOVATOR Award for Cancer Prevention Research will provide me with this first opportunity to apply my laboratory findings to the clinical aspect of cancer prevention."
Top of Page
2009 GRANTEE
Gregory P. Tochtrop, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH
Novel Triterpenoid Chemopreventatives from the Natural Product Bryonolic Acid
"Although cancer and cancer research have been held of paramount importance for a number of decades, its prevention through the use of small molecules (drugs) has not garnered significant attention. This stands in stark contrast to cardiovascular disease, where chemoprevention is rich with examples such as antihypertensives to reduce cardiovascular stress, statins to control serum cholesterol, and NSAIDs (such as aspirin) being used to prevent initial or subsequent heart attack. The research funded by this award represents our ambitions to develop novel classes of small molecules to control the onset and progression of colon cancer in a mouse model predisposed to tumor formation. More specifically, we aim to explore a small molecule we have identified and purified from the sprouts of common zucchini (chemically similar to a class of chemopreventives derived from Chinese herbs) and test its potential to modulate key inflammatory enzymes we have hypothesized to be important for carcinogenesis and cancer progression. We will use a chemical discipline known as diversity-oriented synthesis (DOS) to alter the chemical makeup of this molecule and identify which parts of the molecule are important for activity. To evaluate whether these molecules can control tumor formation and progression, we will use a two-stage evaluation procedure initially using cell culture to study the effects on key inflammatory enzymes. Subsequently, we will use a genetically altered mouse, predisposed to forming colon cancer, to test how well our molecules can prevent these animals from developing tumors. The Landon Foundation Award will be critical in providing resources helping our laboratory take our promising preliminary data and begin to complete the critical experiments that will, hopefully, uncover a new class of small molecules showing promise for cancer prevention."
Top of Page