[Island Outreach Foundation Innovator of the Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award]
Defining new paradigms to understand drug resistance

New targeted therapies have been successful in treating certain cancers.  For example, for lung cancer, Iressa and Tarceva produce encouraging responses in Non-Small Cell Lung Carcinomas (NSCLC) with specific gene mutations.  However, clinical data shows that the tumors inevitably develop drug resistance, which results in relapse within a few years.  Currently it is not well understood how cancers develop resistance to drugs over time. 

Dr. Sordella aims to characterize drug-resistant lung cancer cells at the molecular and genetic levels, defining the requirements for their survival and ability to spread.  The ultimate goal of this research is to develop methods to therapeutically target these tumor cells in lung cancer as well as in other cancer types.   

Dr. Sordella said, “While risky, this project has the potential to provide life-changing benefits for a large number of cancer patients.  I am very grateful to the Damon Runyon and Island Outreach Foundations for this grant, which will allow us to fast-track this research.  Given the prestige associated with this Damon Runyon Award, I also hope that it will help us to gain additional funding from other sources.”

 

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Project Title: "Characterization of Erlotinib resistant, Mesenchymal and Metastatic (EMM) cells present in naïve lung tumors prior to treatments"

Institution: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

Sponsor(s) / Mentor(s): n/a

Cancer Type: Lung

Research Area: Invasion and Metastasis