St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center Cancer Researchers Receive $8.6 million in Federal Grants

Friday, December 11, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – December 11, 2009

Contact
Melanie Franco
St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center
617-779-6098
Melanie.franco@caritaschristi.org

St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center Cancer Researchers Receive $8.6 million in Federal Grants

Grants from the Department of Energy will work to understand impact low dose radiation exposure has on cancer risk

BRIGHTON, MA — St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center, a Caritas Family Hospital and teaching affiliate of Tufts University School of Medicine, is pleased to announce the receipt of two significant research grants awarded to the Center of Cancer Systems Biology (CCSB) from the U.S Department of Energy (DOE) totaling $8.6 million over five years.

 A $7.5 million Program Project was awarded to Lynn Hlatky, PhD, Director, CCSB to study cancer risk from low dose radiation exposure, and a $1.05 million Investigator Grant was awarded to Philip Hahnfeldt, PhD, Senior Investigator, CCSB to formulate mathematical models to better understand this connection.  The grants are focused on investigating the carcinogenesis risk of low-dose radiation from the perspectives of multi-scale systems biology and population heterogeneity.  The awards will result in a substantial growth of the scientific, technical and administrative staff of the Center.

According to Nicolaos Madias, MD, Chairman, Department of Medicine at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center, “These awards are yet another testament to the outstanding science conducted at the CCSB under Dr. Hlatky’s direction.  They add to the growing reputation of St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center as a vibrant center of inquiry in the broad area of cancer systems biology at the national and international levels.”

Both grants will further the mission of the Low Dose Program of the Department of Energy’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research, which is to determine the risk of cancer from exposures in the clinic, workplace, and radon in our homes, as well as the specialized production, management and disposal of nuclear materials.

Understanding the Origins of Cancer

In broader terms Drs. Hlatky and Hahnfeldt, working together, are seeking to understand the longstanding question of cancer causation.  Previously scientists have assumed that there is a fixed lag time between the creation of the first malignant cell and the development of clinical cancer.  However, based on existing research, this theory is beginning to develop holes.  Specifically, investigation points to the presence of small microscopic non-growing tumors, or “dormant tumors”, in people who never develop symptomatic clinical cancer.

The existence of dormant tumors in the majority of healthy individuals challenges current thinking as to how cancer cells progress towards clinical cancer.  It is this transition where the risks of radiation exposure for cancer development are being studied by Drs. Hlatky and Hahnfeldt and their colleagues.

The new working hypothesis for both investigators is that interactions between cells within the tumor and its microenvironment can play deciding permissive or inhibitory roles in carcinogenesis, so it is important for low-dose risk estimation that radiation effects based on a systems approach, where both the tumor and its microenvironment, be considered and quantified.  Intercellular interactions and cross talk between cells do not just accompany cancer, but can determine whether cancer grows to a point to be clinically detected.

Carcinogenesis risk from long-term exposure to low dose radiation may be as much about the modulation of microscopic cancers as it is about the stepwise creation of cancer cells.  Dr. Hlatky’s group will look at how such radiation may act directly to advance or even suppress cancer progression by altering the tumor microenvironment.  In addition, the group will study how perturbations such as radiation can influence the latency or reactivation of a pre-existing dormant neoplasm.

Dr. Hahnfeldt’s Investigator Grant will use agent-based computer models to study the complicated cell-cell interactions that determine the growth of tumor populations.  By tracking the locations and fates of individual cells (‘agents’) as they expand in 2-D or 3-D lattices according to known rules for proliferation and interaction, the development of the entire cancer cell population can be simulated.  From this system the complicated dependence of cell-level behaviors on population-level development and cancer risk will be visualized.

The DOE research will complement ongoing NASA-funded research at the Center to determine the effects of higher dose space radiation exposure and the cancer risk it poses for astronauts on long missions.  Through systems biological study encompassing both experiments and quantitative modeling, Drs. Hlatky and Hahnfeldt are uncovering general mechanisms of both high and low-dose radiation action that inform cancer risks, provide increased understanding of cancer development and ultimately can be used to identify potential therapeutic targets.

About St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center

St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center is a major academic medical center affiliated with Tufts University School of Medicine.  Areas of medical excellence include cardiology, neurosciences, bariatric surgery, women’s health, high-risk obstetrics, bone and joint health, hematology/oncology, pulmonary medicine and emergency medicine.  St. Elizabeth’s is a member of Caritas Christi Health Care, New England’s largest community hospital network.  Visit St. Elizabeth’s online at CaritasChristi.org.

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