From genomeweb.com:

"NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) - St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix, Ariz., said today that it will offer a pharmacogenetic test for a brain cancer drug made by Castle Biosciences.
Under the partnership, the St. Joseph's DNA Diagnostics Lab will perform Castle Biosciences' test to find out if a drug is likely to benefit certain glioblastoma multiforme patients. The DecisionDx-GBM test will tell a doctor if a tumor is likely to be sensitive or resistant to the standard first-line treatment, information that would save doctors time and help them plan their treatment approach.
St. Joseph's said it is the only lab to offer the test, and that doctors from around the US are sending samples to its lab for testing. The test is not yet available for ordering in California and New York, but the lab said it is pursuing licenses for those states.
The agreement was worked out with assistance from the Greater Phoenix Economic Council.
Our offering this test is a prime example of translational genomics closing the loop between the research lab and the clinic," said John Stone, who heads the DNA Diagnostics Lab at St. Joseph's. "While there is currently no cure, this test can certainly help patients understand and plan for the likely course of the disease."

Castle Biosciences is the company behind the DecisionDx-GBM test developed by Drs. Aldape and Colman and their teams - leaders of Project 3 in our Brain Tumor SPORE, where they are continuing to develop this approach.

http://www.genomeweb.com//node/919323?emc=el&m=427776&l=3&v=1b1f28ad9a

MD Anderson made a press release today about Dr. Heimberger's prize:

"Amy Heimberger, M.D., associate professor of neurosurgery at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center has received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), in recognition for her research on the central nervous system's immune biology, tumor evasion of immune detection and immunotherapeutic approaches for patients with malignant gliomas."

Read the rest of it here.

Congratulations Amy!!!

Each SPORE has a Developmental Research Program, designed to foster new projects that might, in time, become full SPORE projects, as existing ones complete the translational process and go go the clinic.

Like all SPORES, ours holds an annual competition (see here for the Request For Applications from July), and applications are evaluated by our external advisory board. It took us a little longer this year, as we had to complete forming the board, but now the process is complete. We had 18 applications, which were of very high quality. The SPORE has sufficient funds to support 4 projects (at $50,000 per year, for one year at a time). This year we were able to fund two additional projects using some funds raised by the Brain Tumor Center from philanthropy.

We are pleased to announce the following applications were funded:

• William G. Bornmann, Ph.D. (MDACC) Imaging PI3K Activity in Glioma


• Candelaria Gomez-Manzano, M.D. (MDACC) Significance of the Tyrosine Kinase Receptor Tie-2 in the Brain Tumor Stem Cell Population


• Suyun Huang, M.D., Ph.D. (MDACC) Targeting FoxM1 for Inhibition of Angiogenesis and Tumor Growth of Glioblastoma


• Christopher Pelloski, M.D. (MDACC) The Investigation of Methylome Expression Signatures in Glioblastoma : Prognostic Biomarker Discovery and Clinical Applications


• Vinay K. Puduvalli, M.D. (MDACC) Targeting Gliomas Through Histone Deacetylase Inhbition


• Michael E. Scheurer, PhD, MPH (BCM) Neuropsychological Outcomes in Pediatric Brain Tumor Survivors: The Influence of Polymorphisms in Cytokine Genes

Congratulations to the investigators, and we look forward to their active participation in the SPORE community.

I am following up on the "how to" post from a little while ago, which explained how to get the RSS feed from this blog into your favorite reader. It turns out, that many folks are not aware of the amazing benefits of RSS. Here is a little video to help explain it (don't take my word for it):

A big "Thanks" to Jennifer Texada, social media guru at MDACC, for alerting me to this vid!

I hear you saying - "OK, so I am going to all this trouble just to read YOUR blog. You must be kidding - that's not worth the effort..."

Wrong. There are literally thousands of useful RSS feeds out there, and it is increasingly dominating the way information is served. Most major journals put our their electronic table of contents out by RSS. So instead of these piling up in your email, and quickly getting lost, you can find them in your RSS reader - when you want to look them over. New items can be distinguished here, just like in your email.

But there is something even cooler about RSS - you can use it to easily set up search robots. A simple example is any News search on Google, which can be turned into an RSS feed. Once you have an RSS reader, you will discover many things that you can track.

Systems Biology, the counterpoint to reductionist science, is a coming thing. With the ever increasing availability of high-throughput technology it is becoming accessible. With the realization that defects in single genes, or even pathways, can not explain complex diseases, it is becoming a necessity. And with the advent of this year's Annual Symposium on Cancer Research, it is coming to MD Anderson!

At the end of October, on R11, there will be a fantastic, 3-day meeting on Systems Biology - everyone in the BTC interested in the analysis of more than one gene at a time, is strongly encouraged to attend. You can see more information on the meeting here: www.mdanderson.org/ascr.

See you there!

If you are seeing this post in an RSS reader, then please disregard it. If you are here because of an email reminder to visit the blog, then this message is for you.

Blogs are great because they use a technology called RSS (really simple syndication is one suggested expansion of the acronym - you can delve deeper in Wikipedia ). What RSS allows you to do is get updates via push - in other words, the computer alerts you there is new information, sort of like the newspaper coming through your letter box.

To benefit from RSS you need to use an RSS reader. This blog puts out what is called a feed, and the reader monitors that feed. If you have migrated to Outlook at MDACC, you can use Outlook as that reader. If properly configured, clicking on the orange RSS button should automatically hook you up to the feed (update - this will only work with Explorer 7, and not the current MDACC standard, Explorer 6).

To get our feed into Outlook please follow these simple steps:
1. In Outlook, on the Tools menu, click Account Settings.
2. On the RSS Feeds tab, click New.
3. Copy the RSS feed URL: http://www2.mdanderson.org/brainspore/atom.xml
4. In the New RSS Feed dialog box, paste the URL of the RSS Feed.
5. Click Add.
6. Click OK.

An alternative is to download a free RSS feedreader - my favorite is from newsgator.com - they have mac and windows versions. Once installed and configured they are like an email reader for RSS feeds.

A third alternative is to get the feed served via email directly. You can use a site like feedmyinbox.com (get it?) to do this. If you want to do that with this blog's feed, you will need to paste the feeds URL (http://www2.mdanderson.org/brainspore/atom.xml) not the main blog URL. Then you'll get email every time there is a new post.

Why go to all the trouble? Like email, RSS readers remember what has been read and what not. Since almost every journal now puts out an RSS feed this is a good way to keep up with the information flood. Also, news sites have feeds. Lastly, you can easily convert Google searches to feeds - this is a great way to automatically search for a keyword or news on a company on competitor you are watching.

If you want to know more, post a comment or send me an email.

Under the leadership of the Principal Investigator, W. K. Alfred Yung, M.D. and the Co-Principal Investigator, Oliver Bogler, PhD, the Brain Tumor Center at UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center has been named by the National Cancer Institute as a new Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) for the study of brain cancer. M.D. Anderson, in collaboration with the Mayo Clinic and the University of California at San Francisco, has gathered an outstanding multidisciplinary group of investigators whose research is both innovative and translational.

You can see the MDACC press release here.

The following projects and cores are funded under the SPORE mechanism:

Project 1: Tropism Enhanced Oncolytic Adenovirus for the Treatment of Brain Tumors
Basic Biological Sciences Co-Leader: Juan Fueyo, M.D.
Applied Sciences Co-Leader: Frederick F. Lang, M.D.
Specific Aim 1: Determine the extent to which Delta-24-RGD can replicate in and spread through gliomas in situ in patients.
Specific Aim 2: Determine the extent to which Delta-24-RGD and temozolomide are synergistic anti-glioma agents and examine the underlying mechanisms of the synergy. Specific Aim 3: Determine the extent to which bone marrow-derived human mesenchymal stem cells can improve the delivery of Delta-24-RGD to glioma.

Project 2: Targeting the PI3K Pathway in Gliomas with PI3K Inhibitors and Rational Combinations
Applied Sciences Co-Leader: W. K. Alfred Yung, M.D.
Basic Biological Sciences Co-Leader: Garth Powis, D.Phil.
Basic Biological Sciences Co-Leader: Oliver Bögler, Ph.D.
Specific Aim 1: To study PX-866 and rational combinations in improved preclinical culture and animal models of glioma
Specific Aim 2: To initiate clinical trials of PX-866 and rational combinations.
Specific Aim 3: To identify novel synergistic targets for rational drug combinations with PX-866 using siRNA synthetic lethality screening.

Project 3: Predicting Therapeutic Response in Glioblastoma and Targeting
Refractory Tumors
Applied Sciences Co-Leader: Kenneth Aldape, M.D.
Applied Sciences Co-Leader: Howard Colman, M.D., Ph.D.
Basic Biological Sciences Co-Leader: Robert B. Jenkins, M.D., Ph.D.
Aim 1: Evaluate the ability of a multi-gene panel to predict patient outcome (progression-free survival) in a retrospective sample of newly diagnosed GBM patients treated with standard therapy (TMZ-CR).
Aim 2: Validate the multi-marker predictor in a prospective, randomized phase III trial of >800 patients (RTOG 05-25) and identify additional robust molecular profiles of refractory tumors.
Aim 3: Utilize samples from clinical trials of newly diagnosed GBM to test the extent to which the multigene set is predictive of response to new targeted therapies.

Project 4: Genetic Modulation of Cognitive Function and Outcomes in Glioblastoma Patients
Basic Biological Sciences Co-Leader: Melissa L. Bondy, Ph.D.,
Basic Biological Sciences Co-Leader: Christina A. Meyers, Ph.D.
Basic Biological Sciences Co-Leader: Margaret R. Wrensch, Ph.D.
Applied Sciences Co-Leader: Charles A. Conrad, M.D.
Applied Sciences Co-Leader: Susan m. Chang M.D.
Aim 1: To create a customized SNP chip (Golden Gate assay - Illumina platform) focusing on the neurocognitive, metabolizing, DNA repair, and inflammation genes relevant to neurocognitive outcome.
Aim 2: To conduct neurocognitive evaluations on all patients treated and followed at each institution following the standardized testing established for a number of collaborative group and pharmaceutical company sponsored studies.
Aim 3: To integrate the data derived from Aims 1 and 2 to determine if variants in the neurocognitive, metabolizing, DNA repair, and inflammation pathway genes alter the overall QOL.

These Projects are supported by the following Cores:
Core A: Administrative; Co-Directors: Oliver Bogler, Ph.D. and W.K. Alfred Yung, M.D.
Core B: Pathology and Tissue Procurement; Co-Directors: Kenneth Aldape, M.D. and Gregory N. Fuller, M.D., Ph.D.
Core C: Biostatistics; Director: Kenneth Hess, Ph.D.
Core D: Clinical; Director: Mark R. Gilbert, M.D.
Core E: Animal; Co-Directors: Frederick F. Lang, M.D. and Charles A. Conrad, M.D.

The SPORE also has a Career Development and a Developmental Research Program.