NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Investigators at the Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center – Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute (OSUCCC – James) have reeled in an $11.3 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to pursue genome-focused thyroid cancer studies and to fund shared core resources.
Specifically, the NCI funding will support a study that launched in 2008 called "Genetic and Signaling Pathways in Epithelial Thyroid Cancer," which has four integrated components.
The main thrust of the study so far has been to identify individuals with heightened genetic risk for thyroid cancer to allow for early diagnosis and prediction of tumor behavior. The investigators plan to use the funding to continue to develop their findings so that they may be translated into clinical practice.
The new studies, headed by OSUCCC – James Professor and Principal Investigator Matthew Ringel, will aim to functionally characterize and identify genes that predispose people for papillary thyroid carcinoma, investigate genetic alterations that initiate follicular thyroid carcinogenesis, and determine the role of p21 activated kinase in thyroid cancer.
The cores that will receive funding include an Integrated Clinical Information and Pathology Sample Repository, a Mouse Imaging and Pathology core, and a Biostatistics and Data Integration resource.