Roswell Park Research Draws More Than $6 Million in Recent Grants

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center has received $6.19 million in research grant funding, including a five-year, $2.01 million National Cancer Institute (NCI) grant to Xuefang Cao, MD, PhD, Assistant Member in the Department of Immunology. Dr. Cao’s work aims to help develop new intervention strategies to improve effectiveness of bone-marrow transplantation, a therapy for treating leukemia, lymphoma and other blood cancers. Through this grant, Dr. Cao and colleagues will investigate a pathway that white blood cells use to generate immune responses, and seek to better distinguish graft-versus-host response, a serious complication of the treatment, from the favorable graft-versus-leukemia response. Other awardees and research to be funded are:

Kenneth Gross, PhD, Chair of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, received a five-year, $1.3 million subcontract award from the University of Washington, part of a larger award from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. The project proposes to prove that in proteinuric glomerular diseases, the leading cause of chronic and end-stage kidney disease, juxtaglomerular cells serve as progenitors for restoring glomerular epithelial cell number.

Jianmin Zhang, PhD, Assistant Professor of Oncology in the Department of Cancer Genetics, received a four-year, $792,000 grant from the American Cancer Society to study the negative role of the PTPN14 gene on the oncogenic protein YAP in cancer. This work will lead to a better understanding of the effects of YAP tyrosine modification on tumor formation and metastasis.

John Blessing, PhD, Executive Director for the NRG Oncology Buffalo Statistical and Data Management Center (SDMC), received a one-year, $530,268 subcontract grant from the NRG Oncology Foundation, part of a larger award from the NCI, to provide statistical, administrative, information-technology and data-management expertise for NCI Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP) clinical trials. The SDMC executes a cancer research portfolio that spans a broad spectrum of diseases. It has a unique concentration in gender-specific malignancies: breast cancer, gynecologic cancer, prostate cancer and advanced radiation therapy technology, and ensures that research in these areas is developed and properly interpreted with state-of-the-art methodology.

Takemasa Tsuji, PhD, Assistant Professor of Oncology in the Center for Immunotherapy, received the Liz Tilberis Early Career Award, a three-year grant for $450,000 from the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund (OCRF). His project will investigate the antitumor functions of a novel subset of CD4+ helper T cells that have the potential to significantly enhance the effects of cancer immunotherapy.

Todd Demmy, MD, FACS, Clinical Chair of the Department of Thoracic Surgery and Professor of Surgery at the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo (UB), received a five-year, $375,095 subcontract grant from the University of Pennsylvania, part of a larger award from the NCI for “Biological mechanisms involved with PDT in the treatment of MPM.” Photodynamic therapy (PDT) was invented at Roswell Park to kill superficial cancers by using a laser light to activate a drug taken up by the tumor cells. Malignant pleural mesothelioma tumors, like other cancers that broadly coat surfaces of internal organs, are difficult to remove with surgery. This study is designed to see whether there is any benefit for surgery plus PDT therapy over surgery alone.

James L. Mohler, MD, Associate Director and Senior Vice President for Translational Research and Chair of the Department of Urology and Professor of Urology at the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB, received a five-year, $195,510 subcontract award from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, part of a larger R01 project funded by the NCI. The project seeks to test a molecular signature for indolent prostate cancer that seeks to allow men to choose active surveillance instead of active therapy, and to observe their prostate cancer with increased confidence that they will neither require treatment nor ever suffer from their disease.

Angela Omilian, PhD, Scientific Director of the Pathology Resource Network, received a one-year award for $175,000 from the NCI for the purchase of a state-of-the-art automated platform for immunohistochemistry assays. The Dako Omnis Autostainer will allow screening of tumor tissues for biomarkers for cancer diagnosis, staging and therapeutic intervention with an unprecedented level of accuracy, quality and standardization.

Lynda Kwon Beaupin, MD, Assistant Professor of Oncology in the Department of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology and Director of the Adolescent and Young Adult Program, received a one-year, $80,000 grant from Hyundai Hope on Wheels to lead the development of the Consortium of Adolescent and Young Adult Cancer Centers (CAYACC), a national database of young adult cancer patients and survivors.

AJ Robert McGray, PhD, a Research Affiliate in the Center for Immunotherapy, received the Ann Schreiber Mentored Investigator Award, a two-year, $75,000 grant from the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund (OCRF) to investigate how to effectively combine two emerging immunotherapies, oncolytic virotherapy and adoptive T-cell transfer (ACT), for the treatment of advanced and metastatic ovarian cancers, focusing on identifying strategies that lead to a long-lasting tumor attack by transferred T cells, as well identifying mechanisms used by tumors to evade recognition and destruction by the immune system.

Kelvin Lee, MD, the Jacobs Family Chair in Immunology and Research Professor of Microbiology at the UB School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, received a two-year, $42,000 new grant from Onyx/Amgen Inc. to study the use of protease inhibitors to reverse hypersensitivity of peanuts. This work stems from the Lee lab’s observation that therapies that are effective in treating a type of cancer called multiple myeloma may also be effective in reversing and eliminating life-threatening allergies to everyday items like peanuts.

Kunle Odunsi, MD, PhD, FRCOG, FACOG, Deputy Director and Executive Director of the Center for Immunotherapy and Professor of Gynecology & Obstetrics at the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB, received $24,256 to evaluate inflammatory cytokine levels in ovarian cancer patients as the Translational Research Co-Chair of a recently completed Gynecology Oncology Group multicenter phase I clinical trial. Patients enrolled in the trial received a novel immunotherapeutic agent designed to activate anticancer immune responses with a single local injection rather than systemic therapy. Determining inflammatory cytokine levels will serve to develop new clinical trials combining immunotherapy and standard chemotherapy.

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The mission of Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center is to understand, prevent and cure cancer. Founded in 1898, Roswell Park is one of the first cancer centers in the country to be named a National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center and remains the only facility with this designation in Upstate New York. The Institute is a member of the prestigious National Comprehensive Cancer Network, an alliance of the nation’s leading cancer centers; maintains affiliate sites; and is a partner in national and international collaborative programs. For more information, visit www.roswellpark.org, call 1-800-ROSWELL (1-800-767-9355) or email AskRoswell@Roswellpark.org. Follow Roswell Park on Facebook and Twitter.