The National Cancer Institute has awarded Northwestern a 5-year, $13.6 million grant to set up a “virtual” interdisciplinary research center to shed light on the roles genes may play in the development of cancer.
The new Physical Sciences-Oncology Center, one of only 12 established by the NCI nationwide, is a joint effort between NU’s Chemistry of Life Processes Institute and the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center. While not a physical building, the center is more theoretical in nature and is comprised of a variety of cross-disciplinary science research teams.
Consisting of five long-term projects, the new center will focus on the storage and expression of genetic information involved in both normal cell biology and the progression of cancer cells.
“It’s a full-pronged attack on understanding the structures of the genome (of cancerous cells),” said Jonathan Licht, senior scientific investigator of NU’s PS-OC and a professor in Hematology/Oncology at the Feinberg School of Medicine.
The PS-OC looks to integrate perspectives on this theme by bringing in experts in the physical sciences along with cancer biologists and clinicians from NU, the University of Chicago, Children’s Memorial Hospital and the California Institute of Technology.
“We’re bringing together people in the physical science and biology to unravel the mysteries of how genes are expressed and how they…affect the behavior of cells,” said Steve Rosen, director of the Lurie Cancer Center.
Tom O’Halloran, director of the Chemistry of Life Processes Institute, said understanding cell genes is very much like decrypting a secret language or fighting a military battle.
O’Halloran compared his strategy to World War II-era efforts to “crack” enemies’ secret codes. During WWII, German officers relied on Enigma machines to encrypt top-secret military orders, O’Halloran said. However, they soon lost their ability to covertly coordinate troops on the battlefield once Allied forces secretly captured a German submarine, stole the encryption machine and cracked their secret code. By screening the Germans’ commands, the Allies stayed one step ahead of their enemies and were able to anticipate any planned attacks and react accordingly.
Similarly, scientists can look to decode the fundamental signals that cells use to program when they should divide, expand and differentiate within the human body. By understanding these signals, scientists could then anticipate when cancer cells begin to metastasize, or spread, throughout the human body.
“This kind of deep, fundamental knowledge…could revolutionize the treatment and prevention of cancer,” O’Halloran said. “Not only could we (fight off) the cancer cells before they grow disproportionately, but we might be able to prevent a cancerous cell from getting there in the first place.”
The donation will also help create community outreach programs. O’Halloran said it will fund the education of students in Chicago Public Schools regarding the applications of physical science into cancer research, as well as other experts in the physical sciences without much background in biology about how to approach cancer-related issues.
The grant will also fund summer, work-study and course-based research opportunities for undergraduate, graduate and post-doctoral students with professors currently involved in the center’s research, O’Halloran said.
“The professors that I’ve talked to are looking forward to expanding the brainpower of their team,” he said. “This (research) is going to involve electron microscopy, material science and molecular biology … and all students really need to do is talk to the professors that are involved in these projects.”[email protected]
