New research out of VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center—published this month in Drug Resistance Updates—revealed a previously unknown biological process through which breast tumor cells develop resistance to standard treatment. It could open the door for cancer scientists to further target this vulnerability and create more effective therapies for disease.
Anthony Faber, a professor in the Philips Institute for Oral Health Research at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Dentistry and Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center, has received four grants totaling more than $6.3 million to aid in the development of new targeted therapies for neuroblastoma and synovial sarcoma.
VCU Massey Cancer Center has changed its name to VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center in recognition of its recent comprehensive status from NCI (The Cancer Letter, May 31, 2023).
Mariza Daras was named chief of the Division of Neuro-Oncology at VCU Massey Cancer Center and the Department of Neurology at VCU School of Medicine.
David Wheeler, member of the Cancer Prevention and Control research program at VCU Massey Cancer Center, was awarded a five-year, $1.7 million R01 grant from NCI to study thelong-term effects of neighborhood exposures and racial segregation on cancer risk through the use of innovative statistical models and analysis.
A team of clinical psychologists at VCU Massey Cancer Center received a four-year, $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to help treat insomnia among military members, veterans, their beneficiaries and the general public who have been diagnosed with brain cancer.
VCU Massey Cancer Center can now add the word “Comprehensive” to its name.
VCU Massey Cancer Center and Dominion Energy are deploying two mobile health units that will provide critical cancer education and outreach to the public within traditionally underserved communities in central and southern Virginia.
Scientists at VCU Massey Cancer Center discovered a previously unrecognized relationship between two sets of proteins that operate in tandem to fend off the growth of pancreatic cancer. The findings could provide information for the development of novel therapies for what is currently an incurable disease.
New research out of VCU Massey Cancer Center suggests that the inactivation of NF1—a gene known as Neurofibromin-1 that holds natural tumor-suppressing functions—could be instrumental in the onset of pancreatic cancer, either in tandem with KRAS mutations, which occur in 85-90% of all pancreatic tumors, or even before any mutations occur in the KRAS gene, in partnership with TP53, the most inactivated tumor suppressor gene in human malignancies.
