H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute

National Cancer Research Month

H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute recognizes May as National Cancer Research Month, as declared in 2007  and 2011 by the United States Congress. Moffitt also supports the American Association for Cancer Research and its efforts to "facilitate progress and speed translation of new scientific discoveries for the benefit of cancer patients and the 13 million cancer survivors living in America today."

Moffitt Cancer Center's sole mission is "to contribute to the prevention and cure of cancer." Moffitt began its research efforts in 1993 and by 1998 achieved National Cancer Institute  (NCI) designation. Today, research at Moffitt includes more than 135 investigators organized around six scientific programs, all with an emphasis on translation.

The NCI has highlighted several of Moffitt’s strengths, including the expansion of basic research, especially in the areas of cancer prevention and control; the growth and maturation of translational and clinical research; active collaboration between bench and clinical scientists; and careful recruitment of basic scientists in molecular and cancer genetics.

Moffitt Research Highlights

• AACR's 102nd Annual Meeting: Orlando, April 2-6, 2011
  Moffitt Research Institute Director's Report by Thomas Sellers, Ph.D., M.P.H.: Since I was a co-chair of the Program Committee and co-chair of the Education Committee, I was especially pleased to see that Moffitt was very well represented this year. In fact, we accounted for 96 posters, including a highly rated poster for Dmitry Gabrilovich, M.D., Ph.D. Moffitt had speakers in 24 other sessions, including a major symposium, which I chaired; a methods workshop chaired by Sandy Anderson, Ph.D.; and educational sessions chaired by Gabrilovich and  Julie Djeu, Ph.D. Bill Dalton, Ph.D., M.D., chaired a professional advancement series session, moderated two science policy sessions, hosted a "Meet the Research Pioneer" session for early career investigators and had an invited abstract for the SSP Advocates Session. In addition, David Fenstermacher, Ph.D., was a speaker during the science policy session and Eduardo Sotomayor, M.D., was a speaker for a professional advancement series session.
  
  A number of posters were recognized.  Wei Cao, Ph.D.'s poster, "Contribution of fatty acid accumulation to myeloid-derived suppressor cell function in cancer," was judged a highly rated poster.  Marc Coppola, a sophmore in Dr. Cheng's lab, received a top 10 meritorious poster award for undergraduates for the poster titled "MicroRNA-641 activates ERK and induces cell growth/migration/invasion by targeting NF1: Implication of cooperation with the AKT2 oncogene."
  
  The AACR also awarded 50 Minority Scholar in Cancer Research Awards, with Moffitt receiving three of them. Congratulations to:
  • Michelle M. Collazo, Ph.D. for her abstract: "Characterization of the relationship between mature neutrophils and tumor associated granulocytic myeloid-derived suppressor cells"
  • José G. Treviño, M.D., for his abstract: "Nicotine induced EMT and metastasis of human NSCLC : Role of beta-arrestin-1"
  • Danyell S. Wilson, Ph.D., who participated in the Professional Advancement Series Session 
  • Brittany Cross was awarded a Women in Cancer Research Scholar Award for her abstract: "Inhibition of p53 DNA binding function by the MDM2 acidic domain"
• Moffitt CEO & Center Director William S. Dalton, Ph.D., M.D., Interviewed by AACR
  AACR interviewed Dr. Dalton, who serves as the Chair of AACR's Science Policy and Legislative Affairs Committee. In the interview, he covers a wide range of topics including our efforts with Total Cancer Care^TM.
• Moffitt and Oracle Health Sciences to Develop Next-Generation Health and Research Informatics System
  For Total Cancer Care to be successful, it needs to be an easy to use resource for our investigators. Developing this novel and one of a kind system has been challenging. We have made significant progress in establishing a network for collecting tissue and data and a biorepository to store the samples. The priority now is to improve the informatics and provide our investigators the tools they need to utilize the tissue and data from Total Cancer Care in their research. For example, see the update below regarding the new data and biospecimen intake form. The following press release describes the recent agreement with Oracle to develop these informatics tools.
  
  To support translational research and accelerate the development of personalized cancer care, Moffitt Cancer Center has selected Oracle Health Sciences solutions as the foundation for its next-generation Health and Research Informatics platform.
  
  The new informatics environment will support Moffitt’s Total Cancer Care program by generating new intelligence from existing systems.  Securely synthesizing data from numerous clinical sources, a state-of-the-art biobank and patient-reported information, the Oracle solution will deliver rapid and accurate analysis that reveals new insight around treatment effectiveness at an individual level, helping to advance personalized medicine from innovative research through to the point of patient care.
  
  M2Gen, a subsidiary of Moffitt, oversees the world's largest cancer-focused biorepository linked to longitudinal clinical and derived molecular data. With more than 72,000 patients across the United States enrolled in the Total Cancer Care long-term observational research study, the Oracle platform will advance analytical capabilities and offer to its clients a platform commonly used in the biopharmaceutical industry for clinical trial management and robust data analysis.
  
  Moffitt’s new informatics environment will also help it rapidly expand the number of health systems contributing to its Total Cancer Care™ collection of longitudinal data and patient biospecimens while strengthening its commitment to patient privacy and information security.  Increasing the volume of data available for analysis will enable Moffitt to identify and validate targeted patient populations for cancer trials and thereby improve clinical trial efficiency and productivity.
• Article Featured in Nature Review Clinical Oncology
  Investigators Keiran Smalley, Ph.D., Jane Messina, M.D., John Koomen, Ph.D., Vern Sondak, M.D., and colleagues were recently featured in a Nature Reviews Oncology review by Rebecca Kirk (doi:10.1038/nrclinonc.2011.37). The feature drew attention to their recent published work in the April edition of Cancer Research (PMID: 21317224). where the group showed for the first time that loss of PTEN contributes to intrinsic BRAF inhibitor resistance via the suppression of BIM-mediated apoptosis.

 Additional Links

	National Cancer Research Month: May 2011 Donate to Cancer Research at Moffitt The Moffitt Research Institute