Banding together
WCP leaders spur new breast cancer consortium
By Rob Levy
Laboratories around the world are developing hundreds of "smart" drugs to treat breast cancer – agents that target specific abnormalities in tumor cells. Next to come are "smart" clinical trials, which explore not just whether such therapies are effective in patients, but why.
With that goal in mind, a new consortium of 13 leading U.S. cancer centers formed to test novel breast cancer treatments in patients and, in the process, gain insights into the basic workings of tumor cells. The idea to create the Breast Cancer Research Consortium, originated with J. Dirk Iglehart, MD, director of the Women's Cancers Program (WCP) at Dana-Farber and chief of Surgical Oncology at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Candace Lowe, ScD, administrative director of the WCP.
"A financial gift from the William Raveis Foundation gave us the opportunity to step back and think about the best way of studying and learning from the coming generation of breast cancer treatments, and what we can do to drive the process forward," Dr. Iglehart says. "By bringing people from top cancer centers together, we wanted to create a forum for creative thinking and a fresh approach to clinical research."
The consortium is designed to be more "nimble" than existing clinical trial cooperatives, more responsive to research breakthroughs, and more focused on the biology of breast cancer – the particular molecular errors in tumor cells that may make them vulnerable to certain drugs. "By banding together, we can streamline the process of getting new studies approved and use each center's strengths to maximum advantage," says Eric Winer, MD, director of the DFCI Breast Oncology Center, who crafted the bylaws for the new consortium and will lead the effort at Dana-Farber.
The consortium grew out of a series of planning meetings in 2005, organized by Dr. Iglehart and Lowe and funded by the WCP, which brought together representatives from the member institutions. Each is a major center of basic and clinical breast cancer research. (See list at right.) All founding members participate in large cooperative clinical trials networks supported by the National Cancer Institute and have large, academically grounded cancer centers. Over the summer, Dr. Iglehart, working with Dr. Winer and two colleagues from other institutions – Dr. Nancy Davidson of Johns Hopkins and Dr. Carlos Arteaga of Vanderbilt University – drew up a funding proposal for the consortium and submitted it to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. In September, the consortium was notified that the foundation had awarded it a three-year, $2.25 million grant, to be administered by Johns Hopkins University.
The collaborating institutions will test new drugs in women with all stages of breast cancer. The studies will be designed to maximize the amount of information researchers can glean from them. There will initially be an emphasis on "preoperative" trials that test drugs in women prior to surgery to remove their tumor, on studies that require tissue samples from metastatic breast cancer, and on those that use novel imaging techniques to measure tumor growth and function. Nancy Lin, MD, of Dana-Farber will lead one of the first trials. Erica Mayer, MD, who is joining the medical oncology faculty in the breast cancer program this summer, has worked closely with colleagues at the University of North Carolina on a second trial.
Proposals for clinical trials are reviewed and discussed at semiannual meetings of scientists from the member institutions. At one such meeting in September 2005, the vigor of the intellectual give-and-take among researchers was palpable, says Lowe.
"Many individuals had great ideas, but they became greater by virtue of the comments and suggestions that other investigators added. That is exactly the type of atmosphere we hoped to create in the consortium."
