Cancer specialists at Johns Hopkins have announced the
start of a collaborative research initiative focused on
developing novel means of earlier diagnosis and treatment
of pancreatic cancer, which kills nearly 31,000 Americans
each year and has one of the lowest survival rates for any
type of cancer. With $10 million in funding from the Sol
Goldman Charitable Trust, a New York-based philanthropy
with historic ties to Baltimore, the new initiative will
support a team of more than 12 faculty and young
researchers.
"Pancreatic cancer kills most patients within five
years of their diagnosis, and most of them within one to
two years, yet research has been chronically underfunded,"
said pathologist Ralph Hruban, a professor at the
School of Medicine and
Kimmel
Cancer Center, who will lead the research effort. "With
support from the Goldman Trust, our team of young and
established researchers will advance our understanding of
this mercurial form of cancer, which is largely
unresponsive to existing and conventional therapies of
surgery and chemotherapy. Our hope is that the discoveries
made by this team will also benefit patients fighting other
forms of cancer."
The newly endowed entity will be named the
Sol Goldman
Pancreatic Cancer Research Center. Hruban said the
scientists' efforts will focus on "out of the box" ideas,
such as research therapies targeting a specific patient's
cancer; use of cutting-edge gene chip technology; and
research into the early detection of pancreatic cancer
using proteomic and genetic biomarkers, or small biological
signals from blood or tissue samples that amplify a cell's
DNA. The researchers also plan to use the National Familial
Pancreas Tumor Registry, which is based at Johns Hopkins
and contains more than 1,400 family samples, to find the
gene or genes responsible for the 10 percent of pancreatic
cancers that are family-related.
"The gift also enables us to address the irony that
while pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of
cancer deaths each year in the United States, research into
its causes and cures receives very little funding--less
than 1 percent of the National Cancer Institute's budget,"
Hruban said.
"The Sol Goldman Charitable Trust is very pleased to
invest in this team of pancreatic cancer researchers in
memory of my mother, Lillian, who died of the illness in
2002," said Jane Goldman, daughter of Sol and Lillian
Goldman and trustee of the Goldman Trust. "By partnering
with this team of Johns Hopkins scientists, we hope to
attract new faculty and young researchers into this
less-studied field of research, and we know that this
initiative will carry on into the future as others follow
suit.
"This new research center," she said, "fits into my
parents' understanding of what it took to build an
enterprise that could grow beyond any one lifetime, and we
predict its results will benefit future generations of
pancreatic cancer patients."
The Sol Goldman Charitable Trust is an independent
foundation established in 1988 in New York to support the
arts, education, the environment, health organizations,
human services and Jewish and Protestant agencies. Other
Goldman family trusts also support arts and cultural
services. Among Sol and Lillian Goldman's past real estate
holdings, among the world's largest in the 1980s, was
Baltimore's landmark Belvedere Hotel.
For more than a decade, the Johns Hopkins team has
been dedicated to pancreatic cancer research. Discoveries
made here include a gene, called DPC4, involved in half of
all cases of pancreatic cancer; the development of a
vaccine to treat patients with pancreatic cancer; and, more
recently, the identification of which genes are
specifically made at high levels by pancreatic cancer
cells.
The complex Whipple procedure, the surgical method
most often used to remove pancreatic cancer tumors, was
also perfected at Johns Hopkins and offers one of the most
effective treatments for operable pancreatic cancer. One
Hopkins oncologic surgeon, John Cameron, former chairman of
the
Department of Surgery, has performed more than 1,000
Whipple procedures, more than any other surgeon in the
United States.
Hruban's own work has tried to uncover the origins of
pancreatic cancer. In 2003, his team at Johns Hopkins found
that pancreatic cancers arise from smaller precancers,
called precursor lesions, much like colon cancers arise
from colon polyps. The researchers believe that these
precursors are a first step to initiating the cancer.
Most people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer are
between the ages of 60 and 80, and there are only rare
cases in people under age 40. There are no screening tests
yet available to determine who is mostly at risk for
developing it. The pancreas is a long, thin gland located
near the stomach. It produces a number of hormones, such as
insulin, and enzymes essential to the body's digestion of
food.
Including this most recent gift, commitments to the
Johns Hopkins
Knowledge for the World campaign total more than $1.65
billion, more than 82 percent of the $2 billion goal.
Priorities of the fund-raising campaign, which benefits
both The Johns Hopkins University and The Johns Hopkins
Hospital and Health System, include strengthening endowment
for student aid and faculty support; advancing research,
academic and clinical initiatives; and building and
upgrading facilities on all campuses. The campaign began in
July 2000 and is scheduled to end in 2007.
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