The University of Pittsburgh Cancer Center (UPCC) will participate in the clinical trials of the North American Brain Tumor Consortium (NABTC). Member Institutions of the NABTC will include the University of Pittsburgh, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), the University of Wisconsin, Dana Farber Cancer Center, M D Anderson Cancer Center, the Neuro-Oncology Branch at the National Institutes of Health, the University of California, Los Angeles, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the Pharmacokinetics Center at the University of Texas San Antonio. UCSF will be the Lead Institution and Dr. Michael Prados the Group Leader for the NABTC. The focus of this grant will be to continue to initiate and carefully analyze data generated from investigational phase I/II trials in adult patients with primary brain tumors with the emphasis on malignant glioma. Patients at UPCC will be evaluated and treated by a multidisciplinary team composed of neuro-oncologists, medical oncologists, neurosurgeons, radiation oncologists, neuropathologists, neuroradiologists, and clinical research nurses, with the data monitored and evaluated by dedicated data managers. Tissue obtained from patients at the time of surgery will be collected and stored in a tissue bank for ongoing and future laboratory based studies, as well as for clinical-laboratory correlations as they develop over the period of this grant. Dedicated neuroradiologists and state of the art neuro-imaging capabilities exist to develop imaging projects along with the clinical studies planned. The effort will be multi-institutional with the goals to increase patient accrual for rapid study determinations; to share human tissue specimens between Member Institutions with specialized interest or expertise, and most importantly, to cooperate in a creative effort to maintain the highest level of interest in laboratory based translational clinical research. The UPCC proposal includes translational immunotherapeutics, targeted antiangiogenesis, and molecular neuropathology projects directly relevant to the mission of the consortium. UPCC is currently conducting two cytokine gene-transfer based autologous glioma cell vaccine trials for newly diagnosed and recurrent malignant gliomas and an active program to develop peptide antigen-based dendritic cell glioma vaccines. The UPCC institutional and NABTC multi-institutional effort will be intimately linked with the ongoing interests, needs, and support of the Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program (CTEP) and the Radiation Research Program (RRP) of the Division of Cancer Treatment. The overall goal of this program is to more effectively treat patients with primary brain tumors, especially malignant glioma, with the purpose of increasing the duration and quality of survival.
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