Research

Alan Fields, Ph.D. (Mayo Clinic), and his team have  discovered a single gene that promotes initial development of the most common form of lung cancer. Their study suggests other forms of cancer may also be driven by this gene.  These cells then drive lung cancer and its spread, and are notoriously immune to conventional treatment. The findings raise hope for a possible treatment for non-small cell lung cancer, the leading cause of U.S. cancer deaths. Dr. Fields received a 2006 V Foundation Translational Grant.

Valter D. Longo, Ph.D., Tanya B. Dorff, M.D. and David I. Quinn, MBBS, Ph.D., FRACP (USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center) carried out a study that found that chemotherapy drugs can be more effective when combined with cycles of short, severe fasting. In addition, fasting on its own was shown to be effective at treating most of the cancers tested in animals, including human cancer cells. The researchers found that five out of eight types of cancer in rodents responded to fasting alone. Fasting, like chemotherapy, delayed the growth and spread of tumors. For all cancers the researchers tested, they found that [...]

Ravi Salgia, M.D., Ph.D. (The University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center) is helping improve prognoses for lung cancer patients at the University of Chicago Comprehensive Cancer Center with innovative targeted therapies and new technologies. Dr. Salgia recently developed a web application that allows doctors and patients to search for therapies and clinical trials based on a patient’s unique case. Dr. Salgia’s group also engineered a database program that merges clinical and research data. Collaborations and data sharing help physicians apply discoveries made in the laboratory at the patient’s bedside, and it helps researchers make meaningful analyses of tumors. “Through our [...]

 Benjamin Deneen, Ph.D. (Baylor College of Medicine, Dan L. Duncan Cancer Center) used his 2010 V Scholar grant for a study leading to the discovery that the protein Daam2 plays a fundamental part of a signaling pathway implicated in many human tumors.  Understanding how this signaling pathway operates will aid the search for answers about other tissues and diseases. 

Victor Velculescu, M.D., Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center), a 2009 co-investigator of a Translational Grant, received a Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research.  The award recognizes young investigators who have become leaders in cancer research through significant contributions to the understanding of cancer.

Ben Ho Park, M.D., Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Cancer, 2003 V Scholar) recently revealed a study that shows how the inactivation of a single copy of the breast cancer gene BRCA1 leaves breast cells vulnerable to cancer by reducing their ability to repair DNA damage, causing genetic instability.  Dr. Park was a 2003 V Foundation V Scholar.

Jorge Torres, Ph.D. (Jonsson Cancer Center) used his 2010 V Scholar grant for a study to that led to the discovery  that suppressing a newly identified protein vital to cell division stops certain cancer cells from proliferating and kills them quickly. In seeking new targets for anti-cancer therapies, Dr. Torres and his colleagues found that depleting the protein, called STARD9, also helped the commonly used chemotherapy drug Taxol to work more effectively against certain cancers.

Dr. Kate Matthay at the University of California San Francisco Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center was awarded a V Foundation designated grant in 2008 to support her work on neutroblastoma.  This is a cancer type that occurs in very young children. Neuroblastoma diagnosed children often do not survive due to the widespread nature of the cancer at the time of diagnosis. Dr. Matthay’s research focuses on genes that are predisposed to and/or cause neuroblastoma, and how to prevent the cancer from developing.  Current treatments for neuroblastoma include chemotherapy treatment and surgery. The V Foundation grant proved critical to Dr. [...]

In 2007, The V Foundation for Cancer Research awarded the Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center a grant funded by the Gil Nickel Memorial for melanoma research. This grant was overseen by Antoni Ribas, M.D., a top medical oncologist at UCLA and the director of the Tumor Immunology Program Area at the cancer center. Since then, Ribas and his team of post-doctoral researchers have been working to harness the immune system to fight metastatic melanoma, which is the most aggressive form of skin cancer.  The grant awarded by The V Foundation funded the research and salaries of three post-doctoral researchers in Ribas’ [...]

In 2003, Dr. W. Martin Kast, professor at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, was awarded a Translational Grant to explore a new approach for dendritic cell-based cancer immunotherapy for cervical cancer. In the past eight years, Kast and his team have been focusing on the behavior of the human papilloma virus (HPV), which causes cervical cancer. Dr. Kast leveraged his 2003 Translational Grant to procure major subsequent funding through two grants from the NIH totaling $2.6 million.  Highly accomplished, Dr. Kast has published more than 250 articles and holds 18 patents.  Most recently, he [...]