The two National Cancer Institute-designated cancer centers have formed a consortium to establish a publicly available library of primary human tumors that will help blaze a faster path to the discovery and development of new cancer drugs.
The partnership, which expands on an initial agreement established in 2009, utilizes a more predictive mouse model developed by the Jackson Laboratory (JAX) and human primary tumors provided by UC Davis Cancer Center.
"We are excited to be helping provide better cancer models for our colleagues worldwide, and to utilize these models collaboratively with other researchers," said UC Davis Cancer Center Director Ralph deVere White."Additionally, whole new lines of tumor cells will be developed and made available for research nationally."
JAX Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Chuck Hewett said collaboration is essential to speed progress.
"The biomedical research community needs a common, readily accessible resource to support this vital effort," he said. "Jackson has all the necessary skills and infrastructure needed to create and distribute such a resource. No single cancer center has a sufficiently broad patient population to meet this need, so we must work together if we hope to compress the drug discovery timeline and ultimately save lives."
DeVere White said the arrangement offers a tremendous opportunity to improve on what now is a costly and time-consuming process.
"The standard way of trying to discover new therapies for cancer relies on the use of cell lines that may be many years old, grown in tissue culture and then put into mice," he said. "While this has proven fairly successful in telling us what does not work, it does not predictably prove when therapies do work. Even when we do have success, in many cases we don't know if a particular group of patients will respond, in which case we may be exposing patients to toxicities with no actual benefit."
With the tumor cell-line approach, cells divide and reproduce, causing genetic mutations. Consequently, the cells may drift into a different genetic profile, and any treatments designed to target the original tumors won't work.
JAX has engineered a new mouse that has no immune system and has been shown to be especially receptive to human tumors.
"It allows us to take the tumor directly from the patient, implant it into the mouse, where tumors have been shown to grow 75 percent of the time," deVere White said."Now we will be able to develop mouse models of virtually any kind of cancer and, hopefully, new cell lines for researchers to use."
DeVere White said he is particularly excited about the potential for the centers' ongoing collaborative work in lung and bladder cancers, where human tumors are implanted into the mice, treated with chemotherapies and their response is measured.
"Bladder cancer is a worldwide killer," he said. "Muscle-invasive bladder cancer has a 50 percent response rate to chemotherapy, but only two percent of patients receive chemotherapy prior to surgery because of the toxicity, added expense and because it can delay needed surgery. If we knew which patients with bladder cancer were likely to respond to chemotherapy, we could do a better job of treating patients without exposing them to needless doses of toxic drugs."
The project, known as the Primary Human Tumors Consortium, is located at The Jackson Laboratory's JAX-West facility in Sacramento. Eventually, JAX-West will partner with other cancer centers to speed the development of this resource.
"By joining the consortium, members will contribute to and share in a tumor library that will vastly exceed what any one institution could build on its own," Hewett said. "This shared resource ultimately will greatly expand research capacity for all consortium partners while preserving varied and valuable tumors for future research."
The Jackson Laboratory is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution with more than 1,300 employees in Bar Harbor, Maine, and Sacramento. Its mission is to discover the genetic basis for preventing, treating and curing human diseases, and to enable research and education for the global biomedical community. Its 38 research groups investigate the genetic basis of cancers, heart disease, osteoporosis, Alzheimer's disease, glaucoma, diabetes and many other human diseases and disorders, as well as normal development, reproduction and aging. The Laboratory is also the world's source for more than 5,000 strains of genetically defined mice, is home of the mouse genome database and is an international hub for scientific courses, conferences, training and education.
Designated by the National Cancer Institute, UC Davis Cancer Center is leading the way in identifying the molecular pathogenesis of carcinoma of the prostate, enhancing therapeutic response and identifying chemopreventions. For more information, visit the Cancer Center Web site.Designated by the National Cancer Institute, UC Davis Cancer Center is leading the way in identifying the molecular pathogenesis of carcinoma of the prostate, enhancing therapeutic response and identifying chemopreventions. For more information, visit the Cancer Center Web site.UC Davis Children's Hospital is the Sacramento region's only comprehensive hospital for children. From primary care offices to specialty and intensive care clinics, pediatric experts provide compassionate care to more than 100,000 children each year and conduct research on causes and improved treatments for conditions such as autism, asthma, obesity, cancer and birth defects. For more information, visit the UC Davis Children's Hospital Web site.Designated by the National Cancer Institute, UC Davis Cancer Center is leading the way in identifying the molecular pathogenesis of carcinoma of the prostate, enhancing therapeutic response and identifying chemopreventions. For more information, visit www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/cancer.