The objective of the Biomedical Prevention Program is to reduce the morbidity and mortality caused by cancer through preventing the occurrence of cancer and to improve survival with early diagnosis. This program contains 37 investigators from 15 departments with over $2.4 million in annual direct support. In addition, we have just received investigation from NCI that we will receive funding of approximately $1 million per year over five years to establish the Great Lakes-New England Clinical and Epidemiology Center.
The aim of the program is to continue to build and support multiple, organ-focused vertically integrated research project consisting of population and clinical epidemiology; risk assessment and education; new biostatistical methodologies to study population clusters and surrogate endpoints, and outcomes assessment. The populations targeted for these programs include the general population and special at-risk groups. The program is organ-oriented with funded vertically integrated projects involving Cancer Center Clinical Programs in gastrointestinal cancers, gynecologic cancers, genitourinary cancers, breast cancer, and skin cancer (melanoma). These programs are integrated across the spectrum of primary through tertiary preventive services. The Biomedical Prevention Program closely integrates with the Socio-Behavioral Prevention Program for the development, validation, and clinical application of educational and behavioral tools, and with the Basic Sciences Division for emphasis upon carcinogenesis biology for early cancer detection and surrogate biomarkers for carcinogenesis endpoints. For the coming grant period, four major themes will be emphasized. First, cancer preventive care will be enhanced through sustaining and building cancer prevention clinics and units located in pleasant community surroundings. These units offer genetic population, social, financial, psychological counseling, early detection screening, and interventions. Second, research logistical support improvements are propose through increased population pools and core facilities. Community focused and multi-institutional programs will be strengthened through NIH and University sponsored collaborative grants. New facilities in DNA and serum banking using existing University resources will be developed and supported. Informatics projects will emphasize web-based clinical data management to support community and multi-institutional consortia and methods to retrieve and analyze genomic and proteomic data relevant to early cancer diagnosis and surrogate biomarkers for carcinogenesis. These efforts are supported by a new UO1 grant from the NCI. Third, enhancement of existing research is proposed through the development and funding of large collaborative grants. Proposed SPOREs in breast and gastrointestinal cancer over the coming grant period and associated program projects or linked grants will be supported by Biomedical Prevention Program investigators. A Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center (TTURC) is proposed for the smoking cessation section of the lung cancer prevention group. The large program grants enhance the collaborative interactions among all Cancer Center programs and will enhance Cancer Prevention programs. Fourth, targeted research initiatives in ovarian cancer prevention and nutrition sciences are proposed.
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