The Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center (SCCC) of the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center is developing a comprehensive breast cancer program that includes cancer control activities and research and fosters linkages between clinical and basic science research. The intent is to develop and apply approaches that will reduce the risk of breast cancer and improve the outcome for affected patients. To facilitate interchange among the research components and to establish the interface for translational research, the SCCC also plans to develop a coordinated, multidisciplinary clinical care program in breast cancer that will include prevention, screening, early diagnosis, conventional and experimental approaches to therapy, and a multifaceted rehabilitation effort. This initiative will be joined to the SCCC's established outreach program that provides breast cancer screening and early diagnosis to a large number of African Americans, Haitians, and Hispanics in the Dade County community. Laboratory investigation will focus on the areas of epidemiology, carcinogenesis, cell proliferation and metastatic spread, molecular biology, and immunobiology. The theme guiding the planning, development, and evaluation of the evolving SCCC Breast Cancer Program is to organize all of the components of the clinical care program with a view toward integrating the elements to serve as the matrix for investigative studies in the clinic and the laboratory. Funds from the proposed breast cancer planning grant will be used to establish the organizational structure needed to coordinate and guide ordered research program development and to provide support to initiate new research programs, create and maintain the mechanisms for communication among the members of the breast cancer research group, solicit increased participation from scientists on campus, and recruit new investigators essential to achieving defined programmatic goals.
