Press Release

Christiana Care Health System's Helen F. Graham Cancer Center is now part of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) project, a federally funded effort to accelerate the understanding of the molecular basis of cancer and to improve our ability to diagnose, treat and prevent malignant disease.

'TCGA will help in establishing personalized medicine whereupon patients' diagnosis and treatment of cancer will be based upon their own genetic profile,' says Nicholas Petrelli, M.D., Bank of America endowed medical director of the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center. 'Participating in this project puts the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center on the cutting edge of cancer research.'

The over-arching goal of TCGA is to improve physicians' ability to diagnose, treat and prevent cancer. TCGA will develop a comprehensive catalog, or atlas, of the many genomic changes that occur in cancers. Data will be placed into public databases for use by the international cancer research community.

With a $4.6 million, four-year research subcontract awarded by SAIC-Frederick, Inc. and funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) - part of the National Institutes of Health-the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center will play a vital role in TCGA's comprehensive, coordinated program by collecting, storing and sharing tissue and blood samples for cancer research.

The Helen F. Graham Cancer Center joins an elite list of cancer research centers contributing biospecimens to the TCGA. Some of the other centers include:

• Mayo Clinic
• MD Anderson Cancer Center
• Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
• Duke University
• Emory University School of Medicine
• The University of Pittsburgh
• Henry Ford Hospital System
• Gynecologic Oncology Group Tissue Bank
• The University of California at San Francisco Medical Center

This award is the NCI's most recent recognition of the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center's importance to cancer treatment and research. Last year NCI named the center as one of only 14 Community Cancer Center Programs selected throughout the United States. In addition to the excellent treatment it provides to patients, the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center has one of the highest rates in the nation of patients participating in cancer research clinical trials.

The genomic information generated by TCGA could fuel rapid advances in cancer research and suggest new therapeutic targets. Discoveries could also suggest new ways to categorize tumors, possibly opening the door for clinical trials to focus on patients who are most likely to respond to specific treatments.

Genomics also can lead to the discovery of new diagnostic tools to detect cancer earlier. These tools could help clinicians individualize treatments to each patient's cancer type, and, ultimately, develop new strategies to prevent cancer.

Discoveries in cancer genomics already have helped identify several new treatments that target cancer-related molecules. An example is Gleevec(TM) for treatment of chronic myelogenous leukemia, gastrointestinal stromal tumors and several other cancers. Another product, Herceptin(TM), effectively treats about 20 percent of breast cancers that have a specific genetic anomaly.

Presently, TCGA focuses on three types of cancers: brain (glioblastoma multiforme), lung (squamous and adenocarcinoma) and ovarian (serous cystadenocarcinoma). Together, these account for more than 258,480 cancer cases each year in the U.S. These cancers were selected because of the availability of human tissue collection that met TCGA's strict requirements and because these cancers have poor prognoses for diagnosed patients.

For more information, visit the TCGA Web site.

Read more about the project:
Cancer center to join gene project The News Journal, Oct. 24, 2008