Our commitment to eradicating cancer is fueled by scientific investigation conducted as part of the largest hospital-based research program in the United States.
Massachusetts General Hospital has evolved into an international leader in cancer research and care. The institution is the largest federally funded hospital-based research program in the country. At the core of this expanding enterprise is a passionate group of specialists who integrate their work across the "super-city" of the institution, renowned worldwide for medical innovation and excellence in care.
"We aim to treat the patient as a whole, providing on-site access to the various specialists required to treat and support cancer patients," says center director Daniel Haber, MD, PhD, who also heads the Cancer Genetics Program. "We actively reach out to the rich environment that is so extraordinary at the Cancer Center, from the medical, surgical, radiation and pediatric oncologists who form the core of cancer care, to the experts in neurology, endocrinology, orthopedics, radiology, psychiatry and all the other superb hospital disciplines. Likewise in basic research, investigators in our Center for Cancer Research can interact with the scientists in other departments, from Molecular Biology, Molecular Imaging, and Bioengineering to the newly created Thematic Centers in Genetics, Regenerative (Stem Cell) Medicine, Computational Biology, Photobiology and Systems Biology."
Cross-Discipline Cutting-Edge Research Now Underway at the Cancer Center
Circulating Tumor Cell Technology
Biomicroelectromechanical Systems (BioMEMS) Resource Center and the Mass General Cancer Center have developed a microchip-based device that can isolate, enumerate and analyze circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from a blood sample. CTCs are viable cells from solid tumors carried in the bloodstream at a level of one in a billion cells. Because of their rarity and fragility, it has not been possible to get information from CTCs that could help clinical decision making, but the new device – called the “CTC-chip,”– has the potential to be an invaluable tool for monitoring and guiding cancer treatment.
Aromatase Inhibitors in Breast Cancer Prevention
Medical oncologist and Avon Foundation Senior Scholar Paul Goss, FRCP, MB Bch, PhD, directs breast cancer research and heads a major multinational breast cancer prevention trial to see if aromatase inhibitors, which are highly effective in halting estrogen production, can reduce the occurrence of breast cancer in at-risk postmenopausal women.
Anti-angiogenesis Agents
Rakesh Jain, PhD, directs the Steele Laboratory in Radiation Oncology, exploring the ability of anti-angiogenesis agents to "renormalize" the disrupted blood supply of tumors sufficiently to allow better delivery of effective chemotherapy drugs.
Hormonal Treatment of Prostate Cancer
Matthew Smith, MD, PhD, is studying survivorship in prostate cancer, specifically the long-term medical complications that accompany the use of androgen-deprivation drugs in the prevention of prostate cancer and how to balance the benefits of these drugs with the associated increased risk of bone and muscle loss and cardiac complications.
Bone Marrow Regeneration
David Scadden, MD, director of Hematologic Malignancies and the Center for Regenerative Medicine, has identified important interactions between bone-forming osteoblasts in the marrow and neighboring hematopoietic stem cells. This has led to a clinical trial aimed at enhancing the yield of hematopoietic stem cells in bone marrow transplantation.
Tumor Imaging and Minimally Invasive Surgery
Among state-of-the-art imaging platforms being developed by Ralph Weissleder, MD, PhD, director of the Mass General Center for Molecular Imaging and codirector of the Harvard-MIT Program in Nanotechnology, is the use of iron nanoparticles, which are visualized by MRI scanning and which are normally taken up by normal lymph nodes but not by tumor-infiltrated lymph nodes. This radiological advance may radically alter presurgical staging procedures and guide the surgeon undertaking curative treatment in prostate, breast and pancreatic cancers. In cooperative studies headed by Michael Seiden, MD, PhD, director of the DF/HCC Gynecologic Oncology Program, fluorescent probes that are visualized using specially designed laparoscopic equipment are being used to illuminate ovarian cancer cells, which line the abdominal surface and cannot be seen by standard CT or MRI scanning.
Molecular Therapeutics
A broad scale of efforts, bridging from basic to clinical research are underway within the Mass General Center for Molecular Therapeutics. Jeff Settleman, PhD, with collaborators Daniel Haber MD, PhD, and Thomas Lynch, MD, director of the Center for Thoracic Cancers, Thoracic Oncology, led a team that identified specific mutations in the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) predicting dramatic responses of non-small-cell lung cancer to a specific inhibitor of this receptor. Laboratory research in cancer genetics, molecular signaling and drug pharmacology is now going hand in hand with early-phase clinical trials designed to find additional targeted therapies for human cancer.
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