USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center one of five teams to receive funding for groundbreaking research
Jones and team leader Stephen Baylin, M.D., Deputy Director of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins University, have been awarded one of five three-year grants worth a total of $73.6 million.
“We believe this collaborative process will help us develop more targeted therapies, and that it will result in a substantial benefit to patients,” says Jones, director of the Urological Research Laboratories and distinguished professor of biochemistry and molecular biology and urology at the Keck School of Medicine of USC.
The Jones and Baylin Dream Team project is titled “Bringing Epigenetic Therapy to the Forefront of Cancer Management,” and will focus on epigenetic therapy, a highly promising area of cancer research. The total grant award for the project is $9 million, with $2.2 million coming to USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The team will hone in on the process called DNA de-methylation, which effectively “silences” or de-activates cancer stem cells. This will be followed by a clinical trial to see how well new drug therapy works to thwart the epigenetic changes that cause cancer.
“We are interested in the way that genes become switched on and off, and how this leads to cancer,” says Dr. Jones. “We can use drugs to switch the genes back on again. But we need to understand what went wrong first before we can fix it.”
Watch the "Dream Team" talk about the Stand Up 2 Cancer Initiative here.
Jones was recently awarded the 2009 Prize for Basic Cancer Research from the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and the Kirk A. and Dorothy P. Landon Foundation.
Jones joined the University of Southern California in 1977, where he attained the rank of professor in 1985 and became director of the cancer center in 1993.
A past president of the American Association of Cancer Researchers and deputy editor of Cancer Research, Jones is the author of more than 250 journal publications and book chapters and serves on several national and international committees, panels and editorial boards.
He has received a variety of honors, including the University of Southern California Associates Award for Creativity in Research and Scholarship and the Outstanding Investigator Grant from the National Cancer Institute. Recently, Jones, along with his colleague Stephen B. Baylin, M.D, deputy director of The Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, received the Kirk A. Landon-AACR Prize for Basic and Translational Cancer Research.
For more information on the Stand Up 2 Cancer Initiative, visit the Stand Up 2 Cancer Web site.
See also, the American Association of Cancer Researchers site at: http://www.aacr.org/
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USC in the News
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The Chronicle of Higher Education mentioned USC’s $6 billion fundraising campaign. The story noted that USC had already raised $1 billion in a “quiet phase,” including the $200 million naming gift from USC Trustee and alumnus David Dornsife and wife Dana Dornsife to the USC Dornsife College.
The Guardian (U.K.) highlighted two major gifts to USC in a list of the 10 biggest philanthropic benefactors in America. The list included the $200 million naming gift from USC Trustee and alumnus David Dornsife and wife Dana Dornsife to the USC Dornsife College, and the $110 million gift from USC Trustee and USC Viterbi School alumnus John Mork and wife Julie to create the USC Mork Family Scholars Program.
The New York Times featured the USC U.S.-China Institute documentary “Assignment: China — The Week that Changed the World.” The documentary, part of a series, examines media coverage of the 1972 Nixon trip that reshaped U.S.-China relations after a quarter century of isolation and hostility. “People look back now and take it for granted that the outcome was preordained,” said the institute’s Mike Chinoy, who produced the documentary. Voice of America also featured the story.
Los Angeles Times featured the Oscar Senti-meter, a tool developed by the USC Annenberg School, Los Angeles Times and IBM that analyzes thousands of tweets about the Academy Awards nominees. The story noted that Mexican actor Demian Bechir received an enormous boost on Twitter the day of the nominations, with a total of 6,893 tweets mentioning him, a 47-fold increase from the day before. The story noted the tool uses language-recognition technology developed in collaboration with USC Viterbi School’s Signal Analysis and Interpretation Lab.
The Times of India (India) featured a three-day medical emergency training workshop organized in association with USC. At the workshop, held at GCS Medical College in India, 50 doctors and more than 100 paramedics learned how to improve emergency support systems. William Mallon of the Keck School of USC said that discussion topics included the use of portable ultrasonic devices to scan patients. “The ultrasound applications help physicians make accurate and timely decisions,” he noted. Daily News & Analysis (India) also featured the workshop.
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