Murtha Cancer Center Research Program
Since its inception, the Institute has been closely working with Dr. Craig D. Shriver, PI of the Clinical Breast Care Project , which is now part of the Murtha Cancer Center Research Program of Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences. Dr. Shriver is the Director of the Murtha Cancer Center, and also the PI of the Applied Proteogenomic OrganizationaL Learning and Outcomes (APOLLO). He is significant to the establishment of the Institute’s biobanking, informatics infrastructure and bioinformatics units which have developed capabilities over the years to serve all of translational research programs for breast cancer and other cancer types. Despite the geographical separation, the Institute enjoys effective teamwork with the clinical research staff led by Dr. Shriver.
As a member of the APOLLO Consortium, the Institute collaborates with Drs. Matthew Wilkerson and Clifton Dalgard of The American Genome Center of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences on comprehensive cancer genomic profiling, Dr. Thomas Conrads of the MCC Clinical Proteomics Platforms located in Inova Health Systems on cancer global- and phospho-proteomics analysis, and with the MCC IHC laboratory led by Mr. Albert Kovatich and Dr. Jeffrey Hooke on cancer immunohistochemistry studies.
National Cancer Institute Center for Cancer Research
The Institute collaborates with scientists of the National Cancer Institute on multiple research projects. One such collaboration is our work with Dr. Stanley Lipkowitz studying breast cancers in young women. We have characterized breast cancer in young women in the Department of Defense database and reported a number of unique features of this cohort of patients. This study is further expanded within the APOLLO program where we are performing proteogenomic analysis of tumors from this cohort of young women.
In our collaboration with Dr. Maxwell Lee, we are applying a gene signature his team developed to a number of patient cohorts which includes CBCP cohorts. We are also using the TCGA-breast cancer study data to develop prognostic gene signatures across multiple cancer types which has resulted in a conference poster and a provisional patent application.
University of Wisconsin at Madison
We have a collaboration with Dr. Hallgeir Rui, Vice Chair and Endowed Professor of the Department of Pathology, Associate Director of MCW Cancer Center, Medical College of Wisconsin. Our collaboration with Dr. Rui dates back to 2009 when we jointly received a Promise Grant from Susan Komen for the Cure on breast cancer patient stratification, for which Dr. Rui served as the PI. Our current collaboration is on therapy-relevant stratification of breast cancer patients using tissue microarray technologies and other studies ranging from the study of benign breast disease markers important to breast cancer patient stratification, to breast cancer patient survival characterization.
NantOmics
The Institute partners with NantOmics on genomic sequencing of breast tumors as needed. In collaboration with Dr. Shahrooz Rabizadeh, Chief Scientific Officer of NantOmics, and Dr. Stephen Benz, President of NantOmics-genomics we have jointly studied difficult-to-treat breast tumors in 100 patients using whole-genome sequencing and total RNA-sequencing. Early data analysis from this study has resulted in a method to improve breast cancer subtyping (hyperlink to PCA-PAM50) and multiple conference presentations.
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
The Institute collaborates with Drs. Karin Rodland and Tao Liu of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory on global proteomics, phosphoproteomics, and glycoproteomics analysis in a breast cancer study of difficult-to-treat breast tumors, where 113 cases were successfully analyzed. The preliminary analysis of the data has resulted in a method to improve breast cancer subtyping and multiple conference presentations.
