Break Through Cancer Doles Out $50M

Break Through Cancer will distribute $50 million in grants to five cancer research centers to support research on glioblastoma (GBM), ovarian cancer, and pancreatic cancer. The money is part of the $250 million contribution that launched the organization in February 2021 (Cancer Discov 2021;11:999).

The participating institutions include Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) in Boston, MA; The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, MD; Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, NY; the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT in Cambridge, MA; and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

Collaborators, who hail from each of the institutions, work in groups called TeamLabs. “We took a hands-on approach to gather the leadership in different disease areas,” says Tyler Jacks, PhD, president of Break Through Cancer. TeamLabs meet frequently, “giving them the ability to discuss what the unique challenges and opportunities were.”

The Revolutionizing GBM Drug Development Through Serial Biopsies TeamLab will perform longitudinal biopsies and monitor tumor responses to different treatments over time.

For many cancer treatments, performing multiple tumor biopsies to assess treatment response is standard. However, “we haven't been able to do this for brain tumors” because of tumor location, explains Nathalie Agar, PhD, of DFCI and a member of the GBM TeamLab. “But there's a lot of advancement in surgical and navigational techniques, so we think we can demonstrate the safety, feasibility, and value of performing [multiple] brain tumor biopsies for patients who are receiving new therapeutics.” A pilot trial will assess a novel oncolytic virus engineered to induce immune responses against GBM.

Two projects focus on ovarian cancer. The Intercepting Ovarian Cancer TeamLab will create a pre-cancer atlas, a genomic and spatial map providing detailed molecular analyses on fallopian tube precancerous lesions. Additionally, the team will use novel technologies for identifying disease biomarkers, like “OvaSeek,” an imaging tool for evaluating surgically removed fallopian tubes, and “iCollector,” a technique for harvest living cells from fallopian tubes.

The Targeting Minimal Residual Disease in Ovarian Cancer TeamLab will focus on chemotherapy resistance. Minimal residual disease poses a significant challenge because even after receiving chemotherapy, a few oncogenic cells often remain in the body. “Almost everybody's cancer comes back because of resistant cancer cells that survive the initial therapy,” explains MD Anderson's Amir Jazaeri, MD, a member of the TeamLab.

The Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer TeamLab will explore ways to make mutant KRAS more druggable. Partnerships with pharmaceutical companies will accelerate the translation of KRAS inhibitors, potentially leading to treatment breakthroughs in pancreatic cancer.

“The idea is to entice pharmaceutical collaborators to provide these compounds and drug development expertise,” explains Giulio Draetta, MD, PhD, and Break Through Cancer board representative of MD Anderson. Pharmaceutical partnerships often have bureaucratic barriers, but by developing partnerships through preliminary agreements, the TeamLab has an accelerated opportunity to “combine and decode the mechanisms underlying drug sensitivity and adaptive resistance” and advance drug development. – Natalie DiDomenico