Funding for Personalized Medicine Research

The Cancer Stem Cell Consortium (CSCC) is a partner in the 2012 Large-Scale Applied Research Project Competition of Genome Canada, in collaboration with the first phase of the Personalized Medicine Signature Initiative of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). Genome Canada is leading the research competition. An excerpt from Fact Sheet: The Potential of Personalized Medicine:

Funding of $67.5M will come from Genome Canada ($40 million), CIHR ($22.5 million) and the Cancer Stem Cell Consortium ($5 million). Projects will be funded for a maximum of four years. To qualify for funding, researchers must obtain matching funding that at is least equal to that provided through the competition, which will bring the total investment in this research area to close to $140 million. Matching funding is typically derived from provincial, academic, private sector or international sources.

Details about the competition are available here.

Press releases, dated January 31, 2012, about the federal government's support for personalized medicine, are available here and here.

Cancer Stem Cell Chronicle

About 3 months ago, as an experiment, I launched the Cancer Stem Cell Chronicle, an online daily newspaper that's based on excerpts from 3 streams of content: 1) Twitter content tagged #cancerSC, 2) Twitter content that includes the keywords "cancer stem", and, 3) content derived from a PubMed RSS feed for the search term "cancer stem".

The experiment looks promising. The CSC Chronicle is beginning to provide a convenient way to monitor recent research news about cancer stem cells. Archives are available. The section headings in the CSC Chronicle aren't very meaningful, and should be ignored.

The CSC Chronicle is hosted by Paper.li.

A difference between normal and cancer SC biology in the nervous system

Neural Tumor-Initiating Cells Have Distinct Telomere Maintenance and Can be Safely Targeted for Telomerase Inhibition by Pedro Castelo-Branco and 12 co-authors, including Uri Tabori, Clin Cancer Res 2011(Jan 1); 17(1): 111-121 [Full text]. Translational Relevance:

Pediatric neural tumors (brain tumors and neuroblastoma) are the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in childhood cancer. This is due to their ability to recur after minimal disease is achieved. Telomerase is active in most malignant pediatric neural tumors. Therefore, telomerase inhibition may offer an effective treatment option for such patients. Because normal stem cells may require telomerase for continuous self-renewal, this therapy may have devastating effects on normal nervous system development and maintenance.

This study reveals that telomerase activation exists only in the tumor-initiating cancer subpopulation and is critical to sustain their survival and self-renewal potential. Importantly, normal neural or neural crest stem cells do not require telomerase for their self-renewal. Furthermore, as opposed to conventional chemoradiation therapies, telomerase inhibition results in irreversible loss of self-renewal capacity of tumor initiating cells in vitro and in vivo.

These observations uncover a difference between normal and cancer stem cell biology in the nervous system and suggest that telomerase inhibition may offer a specific and safe therapeutic approach for these devastating tumors.

For a commentary on this article, see: Anita B Hjelmeland and Jeremy N Rich, Clin Cancer Res 2011(Jan 1); 17(1): 3-5 (unlike the article, the commentary is not publicly accessible). Abstract:

Telomerase is an important mechanism by which cancers escape replicative senescence. In neural tumors, cancer stem cells express telomerase, suggesting that this may explain their preferential tumorigenesis. Oligonucleotide telomerase targeting selectively disrupts cancer stem cell growth through the induction of differentiation, adding to the armamentarium of anticancer stem cell therapies.

Two new initiatives from the CSCC

The Cancer Stem Cell Consortium (CSCC) has announced the launch of two new initiatives for 2011-2012. Information about these initiatives is available via the websites of the CSCC and Genome Canada.

The two initiatives are:

1. C4Resource: The Canada-California Collaborative Cancer Stem Cell Resource and Technology Platform Network or C4Resource, which would coordinate cancer stem cell research resources and platform technologies more efficiently and effectively to advance research and discovery and accelerate clinical translation of new findings; and,

2. Partnership with CIRM: A second funding partnership with the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) through the CIRM's Disease Team Therapy Development Research Awards.

Information about the CIRM Disease Team Therapy Development Research Award RFA is available at: http://www.cirm.ca.gov/RFA_10-05

From the Editor

I'll be taking some time away from blogging for the remainder of 2010. My tentative plan is to return with a different approach. For example, it may rely much less on blog posts, and more on short news items that can be found via a search of the real-time feed aggregator FriendFeed (FF) for the hashtag #cancerSC. An advantage of FF is that it permits news items and comments to be added by anyone who joins FriendFeed, and thus fosters a more community-oriented approach.

Trials to target CSCs

U-M stem cell trial shows promise against breast cancer by Kim Kozlowski, The Detroit News, September 30, 2010. Excerpt:

The research will be highlighted next week in Detroit during the World Stem Cell Summit, a gathering of 1,200 prominent stem cell scientists, industry leaders and advocates from 30 countries.

OA Video Protocol from Matsui Lab

Isolation of Stem Cells from Human Pancreatic Cancer Xenografts by Zeshaan Rasheed, Qiuju Wang, William Matsui, J Vis Exp 2010(Sep 26);(43). pii: 2169. OA Video Protocol.