Unraveling Cancer Biology Opens Way to Cures

As researchers got a truer picture of cancer biology, their success rate in developing cancer treatment drugs shot up. The Federal Drug Administration has approved more cancer-related drugs in the last 10 years than it had in the previous 30 years.

Featured Resource: Tumor Bank The MCG Tumor Bank provides researchers access to a reliable supply of standardized specimens. Click for more information.

Researchers study normal and abnormal cell biology to find ways to disrupt tumor activity. Currently investigators at MCG have made promising finds in cell polarity and strategies for starving cancer cells, strategies that will make existing therapies more effective.

Advancing developmental therapeutics drives an enterprise such as The MCG Cancer Center. The center is organized into three broad groups of investigators:

• basic scientists, who compare normal and abnormal cells, identifying and validating targets for drug intervention in vitro and in animal models;
• translational researchers, who find new investigational drugs and design human trials;
• clinical researchers, who conduct Phase I, II and III trials with patients.

The basic science portfolio for developmental therapeutics includes genomics / epigenomics, molecular signaling, immunotherapy and chaperone biology. Clinical researchers include surgical oncologists, medical / hormonal oncologists and radiation oncologists. Translational researchers are the bridge between the two.

Pathology also plays a key role in developmental therapeutics. Specimens of tumor tissue and other bio-products are critical for research. It is the tumor bank's job to properly collect, preserve and annotate specimens.

Investigators can develop viable cell lines from fresh tissue. With fresh and preserved specimens, they can look at tumors'  DNA and RNA for mutations, amplifications and translocations in the genes and whether proteins are over- or under-expressed or even absent expression.

Once researchers can identify what went wrong to produce a tumor, their goals are:

• to design strategies that will kill the cancer cells or reverse the cancer process in humans;

• to identify biomarkers for early detection;

• to develop strategies for prevention.

Learn more about the researchers in Developmental Therapeutics.

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