Funded in partnership with Miami Dolphins Foundation
Having an unhealthy weight increases one’s chance of getting cancer. It also increases the chance of dying in people who already have cancer. Keeping a healthy weight is important, especially for people from Hispanic and non-Hispanic black families who have a high chance of having an unhealthy weight. A program that helps cancer survivors lead their children and grandchildren in keeping a healthy weight may help them make their own health better and may also make their children’s and grandchildren’s health better. If the program uses smartphones and tablets, it may help connect family members who are different ages. The goal of this project is to develop and test a program that uses the Internet and mobile devices to help Hispanic and/or non-Hispanic black female cancer survivors lead their families in keeping a healthy weight. The first part of the project will develop the program by getting feedback from Hispanic and non-Hispanic black female cancer survivors. The second part of the project will test the program to determine if it is possible, well-liked, and shows improvements on the weight, physical activity, and diet of cancer survivors, their children, and grandchildren.
Funding from the V Foundation was used to expand Miami Cancer Institute’s services available to breast cancer patients, particularly access to breast cancer clinical trials. The major clinical services which have been funded with the V Foundation grant award include cancer genomic profiling for twenty eight (28) women. Each participant is enrolled into MSK-12-245 (NCT # NCT01775072, see enclosed ClinicalTrials.gov description) and receives a personalized genomic profile of their specific breast cancer. These profiles help to guide clinicians with matching these women to precision therapy treatments and available clinical trials which are specific to their individual tumor mutations.
Funded by the Coopers Catch fundraiser, Tampa Bay Lightning Foundation and Dick Vitale
Melanoma arising in young patients (under age 21) has becoming an increasingly major problem in the US. Very little is known about the specific causes of melanoma in younger individuals, and the prognosis is very difficult to determine. In many cases, even whether a mole is benign or malignant is in question, adding to the stress of a difficult situation for patients and families. Newer molecular tests, developed for analyzing other forms of cancer, could potentially help establish the diagnosis, prognosis and treatment for patients, but these tests have not been validated in young patients and are usually not covered by insurance – forcing families to pay out-of-pocket when and if they can. Moffitt Cancer Center is one of the world’s leading centers for diagnosis, treatment and research in melanoma in children, adolescents and young adults. This project will involve molecular testing of the tumor specimens from patients under 21 who have known or suspected melanoma, avoiding out-of-pocket expenses for unproven technology, and the results of these tests will be correlated with standard pathology analysis and the results of medically necessary surgery (such as wide excision and sentinel node biopsy) and/or medical treatments (such as immunotherapy). The results will set the stage for larger efforts to discover why melanoma occurs in such young individuals, and for the validation of clinical tests to determine how patients should be treated – which could then be used to support insurance coverage for those tests that are most helpful.
Funded by the Coopers Catch fundraiser, Tampa Bay Lightning Foundation and Dick Vitale
In the 1970’s, cancer in children and young adults was almost always fatal. To address this, pediatric cancer doctors across the United States joined forces to do research as a group so they could figure out the best way to treat the cancers in this population. Through over 40 years, these research studies (also called clinical trials) have enabled pediatric cancer doctors to raise the cure rates to nearly 90%. That still means 1 of 10 children with cancer will unfortunately die. Over the years research has shown that children that enroll on clinical trials may have better survival than those that do not, and only around 40% of children enroll on treatment studies. A major reason some families do not enroll their children is that they are not properly educated by the medical team. In addition, African-Americans and Hispanic patients enroll at lower rates than Caucasian patients for several reasons, an important one being education about what clinical trials are all about. This project will create bilingual educational materials to teach families and patients about research protocols and their purpose. They will be less intimidated and more willing to allow their children to have access to the most cutting edge therapies and other studies available. We hope that these materials will lead to increased clinical trial participation and consequently greater cure rates.
Participation in breast clinical trials ranges from about a low of 0.5% to a high of 2-3% in patients with breast cancer. The majority of these trials have involved surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation all with substantial side effects but even when the safety profile is minimal these trials have not appealed to patients. More recently it has become clear that the immune response plays a large part in determining how well someone does when diagnosed with breast cancer. It is even possible now to utilize that immune response in the blood to predict response to therapy and predict recurrence. This means that the immune response can be used to predict cancer development, predict response to therapy and possibly improve outcomes by manipulating the immune response using immune stimulants, vaccines, cell therapies, and adoptive cell strategies to bolster the immune response to prevent recurrence. The purpose of this project is to develop an educational program in the burgeoning field of breast immunoncology for breast cancer oncologists and other physicians, patient advocates, patients and care givers to improve awareness about the immune response in breast cancer and how we can use the immune response to optimize our current therapies and where additional immune manipulations will improve outcomes. Our goal is to increase awareness about clinical trials in breast immunotherapy that ultimately increase patient accrual on studies and more rapidly move these promising modalities to clinically useful treatments for all patients with breast cancer.
Lung cancer accounts for the largest number of cancer deaths for both men and women. While there have been recent advances in treatment options for patients having lung tumors that have specific mutations, or by harnessing patients own immune systems, the vast majority of patients with advanced tumors will not respond to these treatments or they will relapse following an initial response. A common feature of lung tumors is their increased production of antioxidants, which promote their growth and survival and which contribute to resistance to therapies. The DeNicola lab studies how the production of antioxidants by lung tumor cells affects these processes, and how blocking antioxidant production inhibits tumor formation and progression.
We recently found that many lung tumors increase their levels of an antioxidant protein called NNT, which was not previously associated with lung cancer. Notably, studies of the DeNicola lab show that if NNT is not present, lung tumors cannot form. In these V Foundation Scholar studies, we will define how NNT is regulated in lung cancer cells, and will develop strategies to block the function of NNT. In addition, we seek to understand how NNT promotes tumor formation. These studies will provide an improved understanding of NNT, and will allow us to design better therapies for lung cancers that have increased NNT levels.
Funded by the Stuart Scott Memorial Cancer Research Fund
American men of African descent (AAM) are known to experience greater incidence of and mortality from prostate cancer (PCa) than their Caucasian (EAM) counterparts. The determinants of this high rate of PCa in men of African descent remain unresolved. The genomic and epigenomic contribution to PCa disparity has been well established with the identification of significant racial differences in DNA methylation level and expression of various genes. In the last decade a number of biomarker-driven predictive tools have been developed for clinical use to aid in PCa treatment decisions. These biomarkers show promise as predictors of aggressive and lethal PCa with potential clinical utility. However, these predictive tools were developed mostly from EAM specimens. There is a lack of data on the relevance of these biomarkers on observed increased aggressiveness and lethal PCa among AAM. We and others have provided evidence suggesting that AAM with aggressive phenotypes have significantly different methylation level and expression of many PCa biomarkers compared to EAM, suggesting that these may be ideal prognostic biomarkers for AAM. Therefore, comparative evaluation of biomarkers for aggressive PCa in AAM is imperative, and carries the inherent potential to elucidate the pathogenesis of aggressive and lethal PCa in this at-risk population. The focus of this proposal is to unravel the epigenetic and genomic predictors of aggressive and lethal PCa in AAM. The implications of our proposed study have immense clinical relevance in this era of personalized medicine for the at-risk population of AAM.
Brain cancer is now the leading cause of cancer‐related death in children, due to the significant improvements in outcomes for children with more common cancers such as leukemia. This research proposal advances a novel immunotherapy treatment for medulloblastoma (MB), the most common malignant brain tumor in children. We have pioneered a treatment platform for pediatric brain tumors called adoptive cellular immunotherapy, which involves expanding tumor‐reactive ‘killer T cells’ to large numbers outside of a patient and delivering these potent immune cells back to children with resistant brain tumors. This approach is currently undergoing evaluation in first‐in‐human clinical trials at our center. This project will advance this platform into a next generation approach that uses genomic technology to identify patient‐specific antigens expressed in medulloblastoma tumors and specifically isolate and expand T cells recognizing these unique tumor targets (called neoantigens). If the objectives of this study are met, we will be able to significantly enhance the specificity and potency of an already promising platform and rapidly translate our findings into innovative clinical trials for children battling brain cancer.
