What if you could find the enzyme that makes some people with acid reflux disease develop cancer of the esophagus, so they can be treated earlier and, hopefully, cured?
Rhode Island's Market Has Changed. Developers, Builders, Investors and Sellers Must Change With It.
By Emilio DiSpirito IV License Partner | Engel & Völkers Oceanside Leader | The DiSpirito…
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What if a single gene could be deactivated to stop the development of stomach ulcers and, more important, the rare but deadly stomach cancer?
What if, with one gene-focused strategy, you could stop the development of AIDS and also fight HPV, the virus carried by more than 20 million Americans that produces warts and, for some women, leads to cervical cancer?
That’s the kind of research being conducted at Rhode Island Hospital’s COBRE Center for Cancer Research Development: cutting-edge basic science that, if successful, could revolutionize cancer treatment and save hundreds of thousands of lives each year.
“It’s using basic research knowledge that has been about 20 years in the making to target specific enzymes” involved in cancer, said deputy director Nancy L. Thompson. And being at the hospital, Thompson said, scientists have access to a particularly broad set of resources: “There’s basic researchers, there’s clinicians, there’s access to patient materials, and there’s the ability to interpret the findings.”
“It’s a very interactive group,” said director and principal investigator Douglas Hixson.
Only heart disease kills more Americans than cancer. In 2002, more than 557,000 died from cancer – more than one in five deaths; in Rhode Island, an estimated 2,400 people die each year, and more than 33,000 people are living with cancer or have survived it.
Since 1950, heart disease mortality rates have been cut by almost 60 percent, but cancer still kills almost as many people as it used to. And while oncology has made big strides, for most patients, the options are still brutal: drastic surgery, radiation, or highly toxic chemotherapy.
For the next generation, scientists hope, the options will be much better: gene-based therapies that target only the proteins triggering the cancer, without hurting the rest of the body.
A few such drugs are already on the market: Gleevec, for example, targets a protein linked to chronic myeloid leukemia and a form of gastrointestinal cancers. Numerous other such drugs are under development at research centers and pharmaceutical companies worldwide.
In 2002, Rhode Island Hospital, already a major cancer treatment center, obtained an $8.2-million grant from the National Institutes of Health Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) to help accelerate the pace of new therapy development.
Research at the center focuses on proteomics – the study of proteins and how they change when normal cells become cancerous – and molecular pathology, both involving high-tech equipment such as a ProteinChip system and a mass spectrometer.
The center both enhances and benefits from Rhode Island Hospital’s already substantial research programs, which rank it 13th nationwide for NIH funding among independent hospitals, with more than $27 million in grants each year. And because Brown University and others in Rhode Island are also conducting related research – some of it right in the same Jewelry District neighborhood – Providence has become a real cancer research hub, Hixson and Thompson said.
To help get the scientists’ findings into clinical practice, Lifespan, the hospital’s parent company, has committed $200,000 per year for “translational” projects – translating science into real-life therapies, offering $25,000 to $50,000 one-year grants through competitions.
“That’s where some of the most exciting projects are going on,” Thompson said.
One, by Dr. Bharat Ramratnam, involves that dual AIDS/HPV-fighting technique. Another grant recipient was Dr. Weibiao Cao, the one studying acid reflux. And another pilot project, now under consideration by a company that wants the discovery as a diagnostic tool, involves a protein tied to cancers’ metastasis – when they start growing out of control – as well as sepsis, a massive infection that causes a person’s organs to fail and can kill rapidly.
Yet most Rhode Islanders have no idea of what’s going on here, Thompson said. They assume all the cutting-edge science is in Boston, so whether they’re sick or they want to donate money to cancer research, “they go out of state.”
Now, looking to the future, the COBRE Center is reaching out to the public, hoping to create an endowment that will support its operations after the five-year NIH grant is completed and to raise millions of dollars for new high-tech equipment and for an outpatient clinical research center to make it easier for local oncologists to offer cutting-edge treatments to their patients.
To accomplish this, the center has created a new “Friends of the CCRD” group, which is having its first gathering this Thursday at the Rhode Island Convention Center. There will be live jazz and hors d’oeuvres, and a chance to talk with scientists about their brave new world.
“Before, nobody gave any money for cancer research in Rhode Island because they had no idea what the money would be used for,” Hixson said. On Thursday you can see for yourself.
For more information, go to www.rih-cobre-cares.org.
