The University of California San Francisco’s (UCSF) Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center announced in a press release that they will be conducting research to advance care of meningioma, prostate cancer, and breast cancer.
UCSF received a Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE) grant by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of $12 million to conduct this research. The goal of the studies will be to change outcomes for cancer patients.
The project focusing on meningioma will analyze why different patients have different outcomes and help identify why some are resistant to treatment and have recurring cancer. According to UCSF, “This project aims to establish the generalizability of DNA methylation and gene expression biomarkers for managing disease across patient populations.”
Another project will focus on prostate cancer. Specifically, “the interactions between stress, inflammation, and immune pathways within the tumor microenvironment and how both genetic and environmental factors contribute to these differences in patient outcomes.” Part of this will be the creation of machine-learning tools that have the ability to identify those at the highest risk of developing aggressive disease.
Breast cancer will be the subject of another project. Particularly, “understanding the drivers of response-predictive inflammatory states underlying differences in health outcomes in patients with breast cancer.”
Each project is part of a bigger UCSF program that centers on cancer research. The grant will be dispersed to the university over five years.
