The National Cancer Institute awarded the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center a $7.5 million grant for the creation of a Center for Cancer Systems Biology to research new advanced methods to prevent and treat breast cancer.

The research team, headed by lead investigator Robert Clarke, interim director of the Biomedical Graduate Research Organization at Lombardi, will use the funds to explore through various models how the estrogen receptor network signaling apparatus works in breast cancer and to understand why people become resistant to hormone therapies that target this signaling network.

Clarke will be joined by Louis Weiner, director of Lombardi, and Leena Hilakivi-Clarke, professor in the department of oncology.

“This is truly a systems approach to understanding a process that is fundamental to most breast cancer cases, and at the end of the day, we want to make things better for women with breast cancer,” Clarke said in a university press release.

This grant will allow the Georgetown University Medical Center to continue to move into the research of systems medicine, which works to understand the connection between genetics, lifestyle and the environment in order to predict who is at greatest risk for a disease. According to a university press release, Executive Vice President for Health Sciences Howard Federoff has made a push for increased research in this area.

“We have a faculty that is extraordinarily well positioned and open to applying a systems medicine approach, and we have a scientific community that contains many of the necessary skills and resources to perform the required molecular studies,” Weiner said.

According to Hilakivi-Clarke, the U54 grant awarded by NCI provides $1 to $2 million per year for five years and is one of the largest grants that NCI offers. It places Lombardi in the top 5 percent of breast cancer and systems biology research.

“Any time a group is awarded a large, prestigious grant from the NCI, it means that the work, the investigators and their research environments have been selected following a highly competitive review process that only rewards the `best of the best,'” Weiner said. “I think this reward speaks volumes about the high regard in which Dr. Clarke, the investigators on this grant and Lombardi are held by the larger research community. I am very proud to be a part of this exciting new research program.”

The GUMC team will be collaborating with Virginia Tech and Fox Chase Cancer Center, with whom the researchers have worked before. According to Weiner, each team brings its own set of strengths.

“Lombardi scientists have enormous experience and insights into estrogen receptor-related biology and breast cancer. The Fox Chase team is [an] expert in dissecting apart signaling networks, and the Virginia Tech team consists of work-class modelers and informaticians who can generate predictive models and thus guide the experiments conducted by the Lombardi and Fox Chase teams,” he said.

Weiner also stated that this project reflects a trend in science of working collaboratively to tackle large and complex problems.

“Leadership of large team science requires the expertise of a seasoned investigator who has a history of producing pivotal research.  [Clarke] exemplifies the kind of top scientist synonymous with the Lombardi name,” Weiner said.