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.

Grant Year 2010

Nadine Tung, MD
Molecular Characterization of Estrogen Receptor Positive (ER+) BRCA1-Associated Breast Cancers

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Grant Year 2009

Sandra McAllister, PhD
Can Biophosphonates (Zometa) Inhibit Systemic Instigation of Indolent Breast Tumor Growth?

Debajit Biswas
Role of PI3 Kinase on NF-kB Signaling in HER2-amplified Human Breast Cancer

Zoltan Szallasi, MD
A complementary genomic hybridization (CGH)  based summary measure of DNA aberrations predicts response to DNA damaging agents in triple negative breast cancer: Expanding utility and improving performance

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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

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Grant Year 2007

Zoltan Szallasi, MD
Predicting 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