October 1, 2002

By NCI Press Office Staff

Posted in: SPOREs

Tags: Avon, award, breast, excellence, foundation, grant, partnership, patients, program, progress, public-private, specialized, SPORE

In 1992, the NCI established the Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPOREs) to promote interdisciplinary research and to speed the exchange between basic and clinical science to move basic research findings from the laboratory to applied settings involving patients and populations. The goal of the SPORE program is to bring to clinical care settings novel ideas that have the potential to reduce cancer incidence and mortality, improve survival, and to improve the quality of life. Laboratory and clinical scientists work collaboratively to plan, design and implement research programs that impact on cancer prevention, detection, diagnosis, treatment, and control. To facilitate this research, each SPORE develops and maintains specialized resources that benefit all scientists working on the specific cancer site, as well as SPORE scientists. SPOREs meet annually to share data, assess research progress, identify new research opportunities and establish priorities for research most likely to reduce incidence and mortality and to increase survival. In 2000, NCI funded SPOREs on breast, prostate, lung, gastrointestinal and ovarian cancers.

Breast Cancer SPORES

Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer (with the exception of non-melanoma skin cancers) diagnosed in women in the United States and is second only to lung cancer in cancer deaths. Approximately 205,000 new invasive breast cancers will be identified in women in the year 2002 and about 40,000 deaths will be attributed to this disease. During the course of her lifetime, a woman has a one in eight chance of developing breast cancer. Much progress has been made over the past decade in identifying hereditary factors (e.g., the BRCA1/2 predisposition genes), as well as novel therapeutic and preventative agents for breast cancer. The potential for rapidly moving laboratory discoveries into the clinic in this particular cancer site is enormous. The Breast Cancer SPORE program has grown steadily from 1992, when four sites were funded, to the present time with nine sites. The spectrum of studies supported by these grants includes the development of novel agents (e.g., liposomes, small molecule inhibitors, anti-estrogens, retinoids, angiogenic inhibitors, vaccines, radioisotopes, antibodies), technologies (e.g., microarrays, database mining), and markers (i.e., newly identified breast cancer genes/proteins) for the better diagnosis, prognosis, screening, prevention, and treatment of breast cancer. Additional solicitations for Breast Cancer SPOREs are planned in the years 2004 and 2005.