Recently Awarded Nodal Grants

2017

"Identifying vulnerabilities in the tumor microenvironment of human prostate cancer bone metastases"

Principal Investigators:

Goals:

  • Why does prostate cancer so often metastasize to bone (i.e. >80% in metastatic castration-resistant disease)?
  • What is critical to the supportive relationship between the malignant cells and the bone marrow cells?
  • What metastatic dependencies can be therapeutically exploited in bone metastatic prostate cancer?

"Adaptation of an evidence-based HPV prevention program for community- and faith-based organizations serving low socioeconomic status and racial/ethnic minority populations"

Principal Investigators:

Goals:

  • Use the Dynamic Adaptation Process to adapt an evidence-based HPV prevention program for use in partner CBOs/FBOs serving racial/ethnic minority and low SES populations in the Greater Boston area
  • Conduct a demonstration project in one community-clinical partnership to examine the impact of the adapted program on HPV vaccine completion rates and assess implementation outcomes.

"Effects of poverty on enhancer landscapes in pediatric leukemia and their therapeutic impact"

Principal Investigators:

Goals:

  • Identify candidate poverty-associated enhancers in children with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
  • Validate identified poverty-associated enhancers in an independent cohort of children with B-cell ALL and high end-induction MRD.

"Improving responsiveness of breast cancer to anti-PD-1 using immune-engineering"

Principal Investigators:

Jennifer Guerriero, PhD (DFCI)

Goals:

  • Optimize formulation of nanoparticles that bind to endogenous T cells in the circulation
  • Hitchhike on these cells as they traffic down chemokine gradients to tumors

2016

"Functionalizing non-coding variation in the lung cancer genome"

Principal Investigators:

Goals:

  • To identify non-coding genetic risk variants for NSCLC on a genome-wide scale.
  • To investigate non-coding SNPs that likely mediate the effect on NSCLC risk and/or outcomes.
  • Functional validation of noncoding NSCLC variants in genetically defined cell lines with and without the identified variants.

"Transdisciplinary Approach to Colorectal Cancer Immunity, Molecular Pathology, and Clinical Outcome"

Principal Investigators:

Goals:

  • To examine associations between somatic molecular features and immune reaction patterns in CRC
  • Examine roles of immunity, diet, lifestyle and CRC molecular features in patient survival

"Improving HPV testing and triage for cervical cancer in underscreened women"

Principal Investigators

Goals:

  • Explore the feasibility and acceptability of self- and provider-collected HPV testing among homeless women and providers in Boston
  • Determine the feasibility of using HPV self-testing among homeless women
  • Assess the feasibility of using promising epigenetic markers KDM6A, KDM6B, and H3K27me3 for detecting cervical cancer and precancer and compare their clinical performance with established biomarkers.

2015

"Immunological Approaches to Targeting Mutant Calreticulin in Myeloproliferative Neoplasms"

Principal Investigators:

Goals:

  • To determine the immunogenic potential of specific neo-epitopes generated by mutant CALR and to assess whether immune checkpoint inhibition can be harnessed to augment an anti-tumor response to these neo-epitopes
  • assess allogeneic and autologous T-cell and B-cell responses to neo-epitopes generated by mutant CALR.
  • determine if mutant CALR expressing hematopoietic cells are preferentially targeted by immune checkpoint blockade.

“Implementation of a systems-level tobacco treatment intervention in thoracic oncology: A pilot study.”

Principal Investigators:

Goals:

  • Conduct an implementation study that will adapt and evaluate the integration of a system-level intervention for tobacco treatment, Clinical and Community Effort Against Secondhand smoke Exposure (CEASE), and then compare this to usual care (UC) among patients being seen in a thoracic oncology outpatient setting
  • Compare the effectiveness of CEASE in a thoracic oncology outpatient setting using a pre- test/post-test study design before (UC) and after implementation (CEASE)
  • As part of CEASE, build a population-based tobacco use database that includes socioeconomic status (SES) and then characterize participants that have had both tobacco and biological data collected through the thoracic oncology program.

“Synthetic screening to identify novel drug targets within the NF1 signaling network.”

Principal Investigators:

“Synthetic screening to identify novel drug targets within the NF1 signaling network.”

Goals:

  • Perform RNAi screens on mutant Drosophila cell lines to identify synthetic lethal interactions between FDA approved drug targets and NF1
  • Test the extent to which synthetic lethal combinations found in Drosophila are relevant to mammalian networks.
  • Identify potential drug targets for the treatment of NF1-mutant tumors. 

2013

“Developing Novel Models for Revealing Spatial and Temporal Variation in Racial/Ethnic and Socioeconomic Cancer Mortality.”

Principal Investigators:

Goals:

  • Explore the feasibility of developing novel hierarchical models for spatiotemporal data that allow for both characterization of variation in racial/ethnic disparities over geography and estimation of temporal trends in the spatial patterning of disparities, overall and in relation to socioeconomic and other policy-relevant contextual variables
  • Using these models, highlight how racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in cancer outcomes are geographically and temporally contingent, shaped by the social and policy environment of the places where people live

“Modeling Cell Fate Transitions in Lung Cancer Stem Cells.”

Principal Investigators:

Goals:

  • Test the hypothesis that there are distinct differences in the regulatory networks and cell fates associated with cancer stem cells and normal adult stem cells
  • Identify gene modules that drive cancer stem cells, but not normal lung stem cells.