Building 31, Room 10A19
Bethesda, MD 20892

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, October 04, 2000

NCI Press Office
(301) 496-6641

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) announced today that it has awarded nine additional grants for the second round of funding for a major new initiative called "The Director's Challenge: Toward a Molecular Classification of Tumors." The nine new projects will join 10 projects that were funded last year to define the patterns of molecular changes in tumors. These molecular profiles will lay the foundation for the precise molecular diagnosis of cancer. Cancers now are diagnosed primarily based on the microscopic appearance of tumors and their clinical staging.

"These new awards expand our activities aimed at transforming our approach to classifying and diagnosing human cancers," said NCI Director Richard Klausner, M.D. "This project is one of the most immediate applications of genomics and other emerging techniques to change the care of the cancer patient."

The newly funded investigators will work to develop profiles of molecular alterations that will help identify clinically relevant subsets of tumors from seven different organ sites and hematopoietic cancers. The cancers to be analyzed include breast, prostate, colon, lung, ovarian and brain tumors; adult and pediatric sarcomas; chronic and acute leukemias; and several different lymphomas.

As part of the initiative, investigators will work collaboratively, with the assistance of NCI staff, to identify ways to present research data so that other cancer researchers can interpret and analyze it. They also will develop strategies for publicly releasing research data. This approach to data sharing should significantly increase the value of the data and should maximize the impact of the NCI investment in molecular-based tumor classification research. The NCI also anticipates that approaches to data sharing pioneered by the Director's Challenge investigators will serve as future models for the cancer research community.

The nine five-year grants, totaling nearly $4.2 million for the first six months, were awarded to:

• Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, N.Y. (Leonard H. Augenlicht, Ph.D., principal investigator), to develop gene expression profiles that will lead to improved prognosis in Dukes' B2 and C colon cancer.
  CA88104
  $537,266 total costs for first six months
  

• Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, N.Y. (Jeffrey A. Boyd, Ph.D., principal investigator), to develop a comprehensive molecular classification scheme for ovarian cancer.
  CA88175
  $102,532 total costs for first six months
  

• Case Western Reserve University/University Hospitals Ireland Cancer Center in Cleveland, Ohio (Sanford Markowitz, M.D., Ph.D., principal investigator), to identify patients at risk of advanced colon cancer by developing gene expression profiles that identify prometastatic cells in primary colon tumors.
  CA88130
  $718,093 total costs for first six months
  

• University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pa. (George K. Michalopoulos, M.D., Ph.D., principal investigator), to develop a new molecular classification scheme for prostate tumors.
  CA88110
  $308,319 total costs for first six months
  

• University of California, Los Angeles Jonsson Cancer Center, Los Angeles, Calif. (Stanley F. Nelson, M.D., principal investigator), to develop a molecular classification scheme for brain tumors based on gene expression profiles.
  CA88127
  $339,113 total costs for first six months
  

• Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. (Gregory J. Riggins, M.D., Ph.D., principal investigator), to develop expression-based classification schemes for brain tumors using Serial Analysis of Gene Expression (SAGE).
  CA88128
  $354,274 total costs for first six months
  

• Childrens Hospital Los Angeles, Calif. (Timothy J. Triche, M.D., Ph.D., principal investigator), to develop molecular profiles of sarcomas from pediatric and adolescent patients.
  CA88199
  $714,544 total costs for first six months
  

• University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center in Albuquerque, N.M. (Cheryl Willman, M.D., principal investigator), to develop expression-based molecular classification schemes for acute myeloid leukemia and acute lymphoid leukemia.
  CA88361
  $466,875 total costs for first six months
  

• H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute in Tampa, Fla. (Timothy J. Yeatman, M.D.), to develop molecular profiles to identify colon cancer patients at risk of metastatic disease.
  CA85052
  $627,669 total costs for first six months
  

For more information about cancer diagnosis and other areas of cancer research, visit the Cancer Diagnosis Program's Web site at http://www-cdp.ims.nci.nih.gov and the NCI's Web site for patients, the public and the mass media at http://www.cancer.gov

To view the press release on the first round of Director's Challenge Grants, click here to go to http://rex.nci.nih.gov/massmedia/pressreleases/molec_chal_grants.html