UT SOUTHWESTERN MEDICAL CENTER’s Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center received $11 million in SPORE funding from NCI to support its Kidney Cancer Program.
The Specialized Program of Research Excellence award from the NCI is the first for kidney cancer research earned by a single institution, and only the second in the nation.
Over the past 20 years, UT Southwestern researchers have identified and characterized a key protein called HIF-2a involved in kidney cancer. These findings led to development of a drug therapy now in clinical trials.
The UT Southwestern SPORE program involves four innovative disease and clinical research teams targeting adult and pediatric kidney cancer, as well as a patient advocate group, a developmental research program, a career enhancement program, and core facilities to support these efforts through data analysis, imaging technology, and a tissue repository.
The four research teams will search for biomarkers to identify kidney cancer tumors most likely to respond to a HIF-2a inhibitor, as well as to anticipate ways in which the tumor may evade the drug’s impact; investigate the function of a gene that identifies a cluster of particularly aggressive tumors associated with clear-cell renal cell carcinoma; examine kidney cancer metabolism to distinguish aggressive from less active tumors; and test novel treatments for childhood kidney cancer by researching the implications of a Wilms tumor subtype.
