Developmental Research

The Developmental Project Program provides short-term funding for meritorious projects in the Harvard and MIT communities. These projects may be investigator-initiated laboratory or clinical research, or they might be designed to create a shared resource or enhance our research infrastructure.

Mission
This program fosters new ideas in breast cancer research, provides critical services and technologies not available in DF/HCC Cores, and helps move research projects from pilot to sustainable status. This program is also committed to the development of junior faculty who frequently use this mechanism.

The Breast SPORE provides developmental funds to both junior and established investigators who are members of the Harvard or MIT faculty at the level of Instructor or above. Other professional designations may be allowed to apply on a case-by-case basis, generally with approval of the institution responsible for the research.

Eligibility Criteria

• Harvard or MIT faculty membership at the level of Instructor (or equivalent) or higher
• In certain closely mentored relationships, a more junior staff member may apply if a senior faculty sponsors him or her. For instance, the Dana-Farber has the rank of staff-scientists who are members of the permanent staff and frequently very experienced.
• Temporary training positions (post-docs, fellows) are not eligible
• Minority faculty are encourage to apply (however reviews are strictly based on merit)
• All applications must demonstrably relate to human breast cancer.

fileadmin/DFHCC_Admin/SPOREs/Breast/Rulla_Tamimi__DP.pdf

Grant Year 2008

David Lee, MD, PhD
"Examining the incidence of anomalous cad-11 expression in breast cancer tissue."

Geoffrey Shapiro, MD, PhD
"The potential of cdk-1 inhibition to sensitize breast cancer cells to DNA damaging treatments through loss of BRCA1 function."

Stoil Dimitrov, MD, PhD
"The role of CXXC5 in breast cancer."

Grant Year - 2007

Zoltan Szallasi, MD
"Predicitng clinical response to chemotherapy in breast cancer by using gene expression signatures derived from drug resistant cancer cell lines."

Erci Snyder, MD, PhD and Massimo Loda, MD
"Identification and characterization of putative breast cancer stem cells in situ using quantum dot-conjugated antibodies."

Matthew Freedman, MD; Rulla Tamimi, ScD; and Sue Hankinson, PhD
"Comprehensive genomic assessment of HER2+ breast cancer."