NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Stanford University will use a $15 million commitment from the Canary Foundation, along with $5 million of its own funds, to start a cancer research center focused on using proteomics and imaging techniques to find ways to identify cancer earlier.
The foundation said today that the Canary Center at Stanford for Cancer Early Detection will conduct proteomics research for blood and body fluid biomarkers that could be developed into in vitro diagnostic tests, a well as molecular imaging studies that could help verify the presence and location of tumors.
The center is located in a renovated School of Medicine building in Palo Alto, and it will work with the National Cancer Institute through the Stanford Cancer Center in order to translate its early detection discoveries into clinical practice, the foundation said. The center will seek to hire new faculty for in vivo and ex vivo diagnostics research, and it will be led by Sanjiv Gambhir, who is director of the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford.
The foundation said its goal is to fund early detection technologies that will give doctors "a much better chance of treating and even curing cancer."
Don Listwin, who is founder and chairman of Canary Foundation, said in a statement that the Stanford center is a realization of its goal to start "the first integrated facility that can attract and develop the best minds in the world to tackle the problem of cancer early detection."