Faculty from two institutions, Weill Cornell Medicine ((WCM), formerly, Weill Cornell Medical College (WCMC)), and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), who share a single PhD program, are requesting funds to support an innovative and collaborative training program in cancer pharmacology. Our cancer pharmacology training grant/program (CPTG) includes an integrated set of training activities for PhD students and postdoctoral fellows. The strength and research diversity of the 24 faculty research advisors provide opportunities for research in a variety of areas, including the development of new cancer therapeutic agents (e.g. organic synthesis, monoclonal antibody technology, differentiation therapy, immunotherapies, & the screening of chemical libraries), the analysis of molecular mechanisms to identify new drug targets, exploration of how drugs act on cancer cells, cancer prevention, and clinical trials. This CPTG is unusual in that it features broad training ranging from molecular pharmacology to animal models of cancer and human clinical trials. Many faculty on the CPTG are physician-scientists who treat patients as well as perform research. The PhD program includes course work, three lab rotations, an admission to candidacy exam, thesis research, and a robust mentoring program. A major PhD course, Cancer Pharmacology (part of this program) represents a strong commitment of the 24 CPTG faculty to the training of students and fellows. Students and fellows present their research at the annual two-day Pharmacology Program retreat and at scientific meetings. Pre- and postdoctoral CPTG fellows attend weekly journal clubs and take courses related to cancer pharmacology. We are continuing to expand the successful Bench-to-Bedside, a course in drug development/entrepreneurship. Since the last competitive renewal, we established From Molecule to Prescription, a course taught by pharmacologists working in drug companies. We also started a course on biostatistics, bioinformatics, and quantitative biology. We actively use External and Internal Advisory Committees, plus a CARR (Committee for Admissions, Recruitment, & Retention). This CPTG has a number of strengths, most notably extremely large pools of well-qualified training grant-eligible applicants for both the predoctoral and postdoctoral positions; an expanding group of highly collaborative and talented CPTG faculty research advisors; a high productivity in terms of publications by trainees; and the tremendously vibrant and collaborative intellectual atmosphere in the tri-institutional research area. Thus, this CPTG will continue to provide PhD students and postdoctoral fellows with an in depth understanding of the interrelationships among research on the basic mechanisms of drug action, drug development, and clinical issues, producing the next generation of clinicians, clinician-scientists, and pharmacologists in basic research who will be well prepared to carry out independent research and work at the scientific frontier to understand, prevent, and treat cancer.
The focus of the Weill Cornell Cancer Pharmacology Training Grant/Program is to train predoctoral students and PhD, MD, and MD/PhD postdoctoral fellows to perform research that will (a) use a variety of state-of-the-art experimental approaches to develop new drugs for cancer prevention and treatment, and (b) provide new knowledge about the mechanisms of action of existing drugs currently in use for cancer treatment. The ultimate goal is to translate this knowledge into new therapies for cancer that will be safer and more effective.
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