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Taking Cancer On At Its Base

Tribune photo by KELVIN MA

Ed Seijo of the Moffitt Cancer Center received a Bankhead-Coley Shared Instrumentation Grant to replace this freezer with an automated system that will efficiently store nearly 100,000 tissue samples at a constant -87 degrees Celsius.

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By KURT LOFT

The Tampa Tribune

Published: April 29, 2008

Updated: 04/29/2008 03:10 pm

TAMPA - Soldiers in the war on cancer are fighting with new and more powerful weapons, including an international team at H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute.

Armed with fresh ammunition - $2.2 million in state grant money - a group of oncologists, chemists and molecular biologists is working on what could prove to be revolutionary battle tactics in basic research.

From studying cancers that thrive on nicotine to how tumors build resistance to chemotherapy, the scientists say they are refining strategies and tools considered primitive less than a decade ago.

The team has used grant money from the Bankhead-Coley Cancer Research Program to explore innovate approaches and technologies, most on the molecular level. Although basic research can take years to translate into treatment, the scientists say the pace in the lab has picked up speed.

Their goal is to help slow cancer's toll. This year, nearly 1.5 million Americans will be diagnosed with some form of the disease, and an estimated 566,000 will die from any of its myriad forms. That's more deaths than the combined number of U.S. soldiers killed in battle in all the major wars of the 20th century.

Here's a look at how some Moffitt researchers are using their grant money.

Lori Hazlehurst, 41, a molecular biologist, received $400,000 over two years for her work investigating the relationship between drug resistance and chemotherapy. She studies how tumors thrive in the bone marrow, and ways to attack them before they develop a tolerance to treatments.

"If you aren't able to kill the entire disease (with chemotherapy) there can be a residual tumor left, and it becomes more and more resistant," she says. "So you want to eradicate the tumor at the onset."

Hazlehurst looks at the genetics of the tumor itself to better understand how to stop if from growing: "We are looking at how to make (tumor) cells more sensitive to chemotherapy, sensitive in the sense that they have a lower threshold for the drugs required to kill them."

Ed Seijo, 39, manager of Moffitt's Shared Resources Laboratory, received a $500,000 award to buy a bio-bank freezer system, where human tissues and other samples are stored for study. At -80 degrees Centigrade (-112 Fahrenheit) it can keep the integrity of biological samples intact for years.

"And it definitely will keep your beer cold," Seijo says.

The new system is part of Moffitt's push for new technologies to fine-tune the way scientists approach cancer treatment, Seijo says: "We are reaching a point where technology and basic science are converging. Ten years ago, we couldn't go down to the molecular level and find out what was wrong with the patient."

Srikumar Chellappan, 48, an oncologist, used his $200,000 grant to study the link between nicotine and cancer. Tobacco smoke contains a number of cancer-causing agents, and scientists are focusing on how nicotine promotes cancer growth.

Chellappan observed how lung cancer cells that normally die when exposed to chemotherapy drugs "do not die when the treatment is done in the presence of nicotine." He said he hopes this research "will be of relevance to those who smoke, as well as those who quit smoking and use nicotine supplements."

Jiandong Chen, 43, a molecular biologist, received $200,000 to study a protein that controls the longevity of yeast cells, and how it might react to cancer in people. The protein, SirT-1, may play a role in how and when cancer reacts to chemotherapy. By activating or inhibiting the protein at certain stages of cancer growth, researchers hope to manipulate the way a cancer progresses.

"We think it's an important finding," he says. "We think it will be helpful for the testing of drugs and when to use them.'

Dmitry Gabrilovich, 46, an immunologist, received $180,000 to identify new therapeutic strategies in battling multiple myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells that affects about 50,000 people in the United States.

"It is an incurable but treatable disease," he says. "The main clinical problem of this disease is that patients often develop resistance to chemotherapy, which results in disease progression. Our research effort is focused on finding new ways to overcome this resistance and provide chemotherapy the opportunity to wipe out tumor cells completely."

David Shibata, 41, associate professor of surgery and oncology, used his $130,000 to study tumor suppression. His interest is a gene – HPP1Ö -- that appears to throw up a roadblock against colorectal cancer, a killer of more than 52,000 Americans each year. He believes the current research could create innovative "molecular profiles of tumors" in the next decade.

"Our findings may lead to the identification of novel pathways that contribute to colorectal cancer development," he says. "The goal is to translate our research into better care for patients."

John Koomen, 33, an analytical chemist, received $428,000 over two years to buy and conduct research using a hybrid quadruple ion trap mass spectrometer, a device that measures proteins.

Kooman inoculates mouse organs – livers, lungs and kidneys – with human tumor cells, then introduces certain proteins to incite reactions. Kooman says gains in basic research, better drugs and treatments together are revolutionizing the fight against cancer.

"It's a phenomenal improvement from 10 years ago," he says. "We're starting to understand how cancer works as an intact system."

Reporter Kurt Loft can be reached at (813) 259-7570 or kloft@tampatrib.com.

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