Funded in partnership with Miami Dolphins Foundation
Vitamins play an essential role in keeping our immune system healthy by maintaining normal blood cell production. Certain types of vitamins can also help in the prevention and treatment of blood cancers. Vitamin A has been used for decades to treat a subset of blood cancer patients with defects in a protein that relies on vitamin A for its normal activity. More recently, our work has shown that vitamin C can also stop blood cancers from forming, and slow cancer growth, by maintaining or restoring the activity of a protein known as TET2. Loss of TET2 function causes an increase in the growth of blood cells that drive cancer development. Mutations in TET2 that lower its activity are frequently found in patients with blood cancers. TET2 is also frequently defective in the blood cells of the healthy elderly population that can put them at a much greater risk of developing a blood cancer. The goal of our work is to understand how we can maintain TET2 activity to prevent and block cancers of the blood. Interestingly, vitamin A treatment can increase TET2 levels in cells, which in combination with vitamin C restores TET2 activity more than either treatment alone to stop the growth of blood cancer. Our goal in this study is to model combination treatment strategies of vitamin A and vitamin C to prevent blood cancer formation and growth that can be used as a potential therapy to treat blood cancer patients with a loss in TET2 activity.
FUNDED BY THE STUART SCOTT MEMORIAL CANCER RESEARCH FUND WITH SUPPORT FROM BRISTOL MYERS SQUIBB
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. Non-small cell lungcancer (NSCLC) accounts for the majority of lung cancer diagnoses and has a very low survivalrate. There is a sub-population of cells within NSCLC tumors called cancer stem cells (CSCs)that are highly aggressive. These CSCs are capable of fueling the growth and metastasis oftumors and have been shown to be resistant to current drug treatments for NSCLC. Therefore,CSCs must be eliminated to effectively treat and gain lasting remission in patients with NSCLC.CSCs can communicate with other cells in a tumor by transferring information packaged withinsmall particles called extracellular vesicles (EVs). We hypothesize that the molecules packagedwithin EVs from CSCs can make non-CSCs within NSCLC tumors more aggressive by increasing their ability to grow and metastasize. We propose to identify the molecules packaged within NSCLC CSC EVs. We also aim to block the function of the molecules within the CSC EVs to prevent the growth of NSCLC cancer cells. Completion of these studies will provide newinformation about how CSCs function to make NSCLC deadly. In addition, these studies will help in the design of new strategies to eliminate NSCLC CSCs which may provide effective, long-term treatment for NSCLC patients.
This goal of this project is to develop a new mobile application that will bring together multiple useful functions that will help breast cancer patients who are considering or participating in clinical trials. There are various applications in the market that may do one specific function but very few integrate both patient education resources with tools to help patients manage their participation on clinical trials. This includes keeping track of medication compliance, appointments, and side effects. All of these patient reported outcomes are critical for the successful completion of a clinical trial. A tool that can provide both information to breast cancer patients while helping them be compliant with the clinical trial needs could be a valuable tool as more patients depend on their smartphones and mobile devices on a daily basis.
Funded in partnership with Miami Dolphins Foundation
It is estimated that 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in the US. During the last decades, breast cancer survival rates have greatly improved, mainly due to factors such as earlier detection and a better understanding of the disease. There are at least five different type of breast cancer. In this proposal, we will investigate one of the breast cancer subtypes, called estrogen receptor positive (ER+) breast cancer. ER+ breast cancer needs the estrogen to grow.Estrogen is a hormone that is important for sexual and reproductive development, mainly in women. ER+ breast canceraccounts for 70% of breast cancers and is typically treated with drugs designed to slow or stop the growth of cancer that uses estrogen to develop. Although thistype of therapy has been shown to reduce the risk of relapse and death from breast cancer,one third of patients develop resistance. This resultsin the spreading of cancer cells to other organs, known as metastasis. Thus, there is a critical need for identifying new treatments for patients who develop resistance to current therapies. The focus of this proposal is to understand the mechanisms of resistance to therapy and to overcome resistance by using a novel therapeutic approach. This is the next step towards our overarching goal, which is the identification of new therapeutic opportunities for the treatment of patients with aggressive breast cancer.
Funded by the Constellation Gold Network Distributors
Over the past several years, immunotherapy has emerged as a highly effective treatment for cancer. In contrast to chemotherapy, which kills cancer cells with toxic chemicals, immunotherapy teaches a patient’s immune system to attack tumors. As current immunotherapy treatments are only successful in~ 30% of cases, scientists are actively searching for ways to create new classes of immunotherapy drugs. One promising treatment works by deactivating proteins that serve as “off-switches” for the immune system. However, we do not understand how several of these switches carry out their functions on the molecular level.
My research group is using two different methods to guide the development of next-generation immunotherapies. Our first strategy is to use a high-resolution imaging technique called x-ray crystallography to “see” how different types of off-switch proteins send signals. By visualizing these molecules on the atomic scale, our goal is to obtain molecular blueprints that can teach us how to design more effective drugs. For our second strategy, we will use these blueprints to create decoy proteins that can block incoming signals from reaching immune receptors. These decoys will then be used to prevent the natural off-switch proteins from shutting down the immune response. Initially, the decoys will be used to re-activate immune cells in a laboratory setting. However, if these tests are successful, our long-term goal is to proceed to clinical trials in melanoma patients.
The healthcare landscape has dramatically changed in South Florida, and we welcome you to be a partner in this transformation. Miami Cancer Institute at Baptist Health South Florida opened its doors in 2016 and is now seeing nearly 1,200 patients per day. The Institute, supported by a clinical and research alliance with Memorial Sloan Kettering, one of the leading academic cancer centers in the world, grants our patients access to the most advanced clinical trials for breast cancer. Patient accrual remains a huge challenge in clinical research, and the grant will go towards supporting recruitment for the important studies which in many cases, may give patients access to new therapies that are not yet readily available. The Institute will be proactive with the creation of recruitment materials as part of a well-coordinated campaign to address all aspects of enrollment as well as presenting information in an easy to understand and honest way including translation of all materials into Spanish. It is our goal to track enrollment efforts and adjust accordingly to what works best for our patient base and the community we serve. The mission of the breast clinical trial enrollment program is to provide innovative, patient centered cancer care through access to cutting edge treatments.
Only a small percentage of patients with cancer in the US enroll on to clinical trials. This is creating a bottleneck for the development of new treatments. Efforts to improve how patients are identified for clinical trials are important to overcome this problem. One such effort which is showing promise is to use an individual known as a “pre-screener” to aid the clinical team in identifying eligible patients. The pre-screener functions as an extra set of eyes to review information generated from our electronic medical record as their records come in from referring physicians. They will be trained to look for patients meeting certain eligibility criteria and then notify the clinical team about the matches ahead of their visit. This will allow the team to better prepare and notify the coordinator for the study to be available at that time. The pre-screener will also serve as a resource for patients using our clinical trial education center in the clinic waiting area to help them navigate through the available information to identify a potential trial option to discuss with their physician during their visit.
Funded by 2019 Kay Yow Cancer Fund Final Four Research Award
Cancer in the ovaries is an aggressive and deadly disease with limited treatment choices. A crippled protective immune system is commonly found in patients with ovarian cancer and limits the effect of multiple treatments. We recently described a new therapy based on the transfer of immune T cells engineered to spot and kill ovarian cancer cells. These therapeutic cells are referred as FSH-CER T cells. Here, we propose a plan to boost the effects of FSH-CER T cells by promoting the growth of T cell subsets with a higher capacity to eliminate tumors. This will be done by the inhibition of key drivers of cellular stress. Thus, our data will set the basis for a therapy to efficiently treat ovarian cancer patients.
The healthcare landscape has dramatically changed in South Florida, and we welcome you to be a partner in this transformation. Miami Cancer Institute at Baptist Health South Florida opened its doors in 2016 and is now seeing nearly 1,000 patients per day. The Institute, supported by a clinical and research alliance with Memorial Sloan Kettering, one of the leading academic cancer centers in the world, grants our patients access to the most advanced clinical trials for breast cancer. Patient accrual remains a huge challenge in clinical research, and the grant will go towards supporting recruitment for the important studies which in many cases, may give patients access to new therapies that are not yet readily available. The Institute will be proactive with the creation of recruitment materials as part of a well-coordinated campaign to address all aspects of enrollment as well as presenting information in an easy to understand and honest way. It is our goal to track enrollment efforts and adjust accordingly to what works best for our patient base and the community we serve. The mission of the breast clinical trial enrollment program is to provide innovative, patient centered cancer care through access to cutting edge treatment.
Only a small percentage of patients with cancer in the US enroll on to clinical trials. This is creating a bottleneck for the development of new treatments. Efforts to improve how patients are identified for clinical trials are important to overcome this problem. One such effort which is showing promise is to use an individual known as a “pre-screener” to aid the clinical team in identifying eligible patients. The pre-screener functions as an extra set of eyes to review information generated from our electronic medical record as their records come in from referring physicians. They will be trained to look for patients meeting certain eligibility criteria and then notify the clinical team about the matches ahead of their visit. This will allow the team to better prepare and notify the coordinator for the study to be available at that time. The pre-screener will also serve as a resource for patients using our clinical trial education center in the clinic waiting area to help them navigate through the available information to identify a potential trial option to discuss with their physician during their visit.
