NCI Awards Grant to Pancreatic Cancer Research Team

Pancreas Cancer Genome Grant awarded to Johns Hopkins Investigators in the Sol Goldman Pancreatic Cancer Research Center, the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, and the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine have been awarded an $8 million dollar P01 Program Project Grant (PPG) from the National Cancer Institute.  This program, entitled "Functional Annotation of the Pancreatic Cancer Genome", will seek to functionally characterize novel oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes identified through next generation sequencing of human pancreatic cancer genomic DNA, using cell-, zebrafish- and mouse-based model systems.  The program is directed by Dr. Steven Leach, and includes individual projects directed by Dr. Leach, Dr. Scott Kern, Dr. Anirban Maitra and Dr. Joshua Mendell.  The grant also supports both a Zebrafish Core, directed by Dr. Michael Parsons, and a Phenotyping Core, directed by Dr. David Huso.   The effort builds on the Pancreatic Cancer Genome Sequence project spearheaded by Dr. Ralph Hruban, Dr. Bert Vogelstein and Dr. Victor Velculescu, and is ultimately made possible by the high volumes of pancreatic cancer patients cared for by specialists in the 
Departments of Surgery, Oncology, and Radiation Oncology.