NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The Prostate Cancer Foundation plans to use a $7 million donation from New York billionaire Stewart Rahr to fund a multi-partner research project that will use genomic medicine and other approaches to discover new prostate cancer treatments.
PCF said today that $5 million of the gift will fund a partnership with Stand Up to Cancer, called the Dream Team, that involves investigators at multiple institutes. The researchers will develop protocols, based on genomics, informatics, clinical genetics, and pathology to enable physicians to provide targeted treatments within five weeks of a positive biopsy.
The Dream Team project is led by Arul Chinnaiyan, director of the University of Michigan Center for Translational Pathology, and Charles Sawyers, chair of the Human Oncology and Pathogenesis Program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
Other Dream Team partners include researchers at the Broad Institute, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the Institute of Cancer Research/The Royal Marsden Hospital in London, and Weill Cornell Medical College.
PCF will use the remaining $2 million from the donation to fund its other grant programs, including the Creativity, Challenge, and Young Investigator Awards.
In September PCF awarded $3 million through its Challenge Awards program for research efforts using genetics and genomics approaches, including genome sequencing and gene expression-based studies aimed at developing personalized cancer treatments.