The Solid Tumor Therapeutics Program, which evolved from the Experimental Therapeutics Program, is a new program within the re-organized Duke Cancer Institute. The Solid Tumor Therapeutics Program focuses disease specific drug development and testing in the following disease groups: gastrointestinal cancers (esophageal, gastric, small intestine, colorectal, anal, hepatobiliary and pancreatic, genitourinary cancers (kidney, bladder, prostate, testicular), thoracic cancers (lung), sarcoma, melanoma and head and neck cancers. Most solid tumors share common alterations in the major signaling pathways regulating development and homeostasis, including the EGF, TGF-?, PDGF, VEGF, IGF, Hh, Wnt, Src and c-Met pathways. In addition, solid tumor share conserved roles for the tumor microenvironment (immune system, angiogenesis). Further, gaining insight into the cancer cell autonomous and tumor microenvironment alterations that will result in improvements in clinical practice requires the development of more relevant pre-clinical or concurrent models. Accordingly, a major goal of the Solid Tumor Therapeutics Research Program is to align the research efforts across these disease sites along these themes (signal transduction, tumor microenvironment, preclinical modeling), promoting synergy across research groups at Duke as we capitalize on early stage drug discovery and lead development efforts of the Developmental Therapeutics Program, and increase disease specific drug development and testing with investigator initiated trials, including Phase I experimental therapeutics. Opportunities for translational and clinical trial development will occur through the NCI Experimental Therapeutics Clinical Trials Network with Phase I emphasis (ET-CTN) grant and the National Clinical Trials Network (NCTN) lead academic site grant, both of which are led by investigators in this program. The program is comprised of 45 primary members and 29 secondary members from a wide spectrum of 12 different departments within the School of Medicine. Total funding (Direct + Indirect) for primary program members is $21.2M, of which $7.6M is peer reviewed. Of the $7.6M in peer reviewed funding, $2.9M is from the NCI and $4.7M is from the NIH and other peer-reviewed organizations, demonstrating the cancer focus of this program, as well as the balance between peer reviewed and industry funding for this translational research program. From 2009-2013, program members published 833 papers in peer-reviewed journals cited in PubMed. Of these publications, 184 (22%) are the result of intra-programmatic collaborations and 157 (19%) are due to inter-programmatic collaborations.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 513 publications
