Aim high. MD Anderson President Ronald DePinho lead a "moon shot" attack on eight cancers.
Wikimedia Commons / MDACC
the largest cancer center in the country, the University of Texas (UT) MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, unveiled today ' hui what he called a plan "moon shot" to significantly improve survival for several types of cancer over the next decade. Some outside researchers are cringing at the idea that cancer can be defeated by an institute.
Behind the plane is colored president of MD Anderson, Ronald DePinho, who came to the center a year ago of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. DePinho compares the program to speech 50 years of President John F. Kennedy in Houston announced a goal of sending Americans to the moon. At this stage of space exploration, "We had a solid knowledge and we also had the maturation of technologies to start," said DePinho at a press conference today. The field of cancer, he said, is also seeing "a confluence of technological advances are changing the that allow us to understand the fundamental underpinnings of this disease."
The Moon Shots program aims to "significantly increase the survival of patients" over the next decade to form large teams of researchers and clinicians who will focus on specific cancers. Cancers are the acute myeloid leukemia, myelodysplastic syndrome, chronic lymphocytic leukemia, melanoma, lung cancer, prostate cancer, breast cancer known as triple negative cancer and ovarian cancer.
DePinho said the program will involve basic and applied research, such as the sequencing of the genome of the tumor, as well as efforts to put existing knowledge in practice, such as studies suggesting that screening heavy smokers for lung cancer with a new type of x-ray imaging saves lives one website describes the objectives such as:. "Integrating molecular profiling in an early stage and locally advanced lung cancer to increase the number of patients cured 10-20 %. "the program will also include public awareness campaigns to discourage smoking, for example.
The institute has "tens of millions" to start, and plans to spend up to $ 3 billion over 10 years on the program, drawing on funding from public and private sources, DePinho said. It will not disturb the research program of $ 700 million per year larger MD Anderson, he added.
The moon shot metaphor brings to mind previous targets for cancer, as the war of 1971 Richard Nixon on cancer. Another example is the goal of the former National Cancer Institute Director Andrew von Eschenbach to eliminate suffering and death from cancer in 2015. Some researchers say such attempts to reduce cancer to an engineering problem ignore the complexity of the disease and the unpredictability of science.
"The problem is not only an engineering task, it is a hundred different scientific problems we are making steady progress, but to say that we will eliminate suffering and even prevent death faces to many. trouble, "said Bruce Chabner of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Chabner also stresses that push the cancer is more of an institution job." We'll have all the talent in the world. "
Lung cancer researcher John Minna of UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas likes the idea of "everyone uniting as a team," but he also wonders whether "this is the right of an institution." Some researchers suggest that the program is actually a public relations effort to raise funds at a time when federal grants are rare.
the announcement follows a first chaotic year for DePinho at MD Anderson. last spring, he and his wife, researcher Lynda Chin, came under surveillance after cancer prevention and the Texas research Institute (CPRIT) has awarded a grant of $ 20 million incubator at MD Anderson and Rice University after examining 3 weeks funded by the state. CPRIT Scientific Director, Nobel laureate Alfred Gilman prices, resigned in part on the subsidy, which has been withdrawn and will be resubmitted again for further examination. Questions have also been raised about the links DePinho businesses.
Despite the problems DePinho, MD Anderson has attracted some big names in the past year, including the genomics researcher Andy Futreal of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the UK. Another rookie James Allison Cancer Center Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York, who had developed a new drug immunotherapeutic widely announced for melanoma.
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