June 21, 2007
Dana-Farber opens new molecular pathology research center
Joint venture with Brigham and Women's links bench and bedside
Center for Molecular Oncologic Pathology leaders pose with President Benz. From left to right: Massimo Loda, Shuji Ogino, Ronny Drapkin, Keith Ligon, Edward Benz
As cancer treatment heads toward an era of "personalized medicine" tailored to the molecular traits of a person's tumor, everything depends on discovering distinct genetic "signatures" within cancer cells and seeing how drugs interact with them.
Dana-Farber's new Center for Molecular Oncologic Pathology, which opened this month, is well-equipped with sophisticated instruments and a cadre of experts in the field to do just that. Research and the refining of new techniques by scientists in the CMOP will advance cancer diagnosis and treatment by obtaining genetic signatures and revealing the details of how various drugs alter those signatures.
"The center is designed to support investigators in their quest for the molecular analysis of tumors," says Dana-Farber's Massimo Loda, MD, director of the CMOP, located on the second floor of the Jimmy Fund Building. "We expect that it will be a central hub where researchers can interact, collaborate, and use novel technologies to translate basic science discovery into patient care applications for cancer."
Loda is also a senior pathologist in the Department of Pathology at Brigham and Women's Hospital, which is Dana-Farber's partner in the center as a joint venture. The investigators in the CMOP all hold faculty appointments at Harvard Medical School through Brigham and Women's pathology department. Besides Loda, other investigators in the center include Keith Ligon, MD, PhD; Ronny Drapkin, MD, PhD; and Shugi Ogino, MD, PhD, all of Dana-Farber's Department of Medical Oncology.
Under the Institute's strategic plan, the new enterprise is one of several integrative research centers aimed at moving scientific discoveries to "the bedside" to improve the lives of cancer patients, and ultimately, to conquer cancer itself.
An open house on June 12 gave Dana-Farber and Brigham and Women's leaders and staff an opportunity to visit the center's offices and labs, which contain state-of-the art instrumentation for capturing cells from tissue with lasers, studying them with sophisticated microscopes and image analyzers, and determining their gene activity. One room houses large silver-colored tanks for storing tissue samples at low temperatures, and another contains equipment for extracting nucleic acids and proteins from tissues and body fluids.
Drapkin, who is searching for early diagnostic biomarkers for ovarian cancer, says the instruments and devices are hooked into a digital system that "enables you to upload all of this data into a platform so that an investigator can access this information anywhere."
President Edward Benz Jr., MD, who toured the newly remodeled space and talked with staff members, said, "Pathology is at the absolute center of any effort to move toward personalized medicine. The CMOP was created to provide the very best resources and science so that we know what to look for in cancers."
The CMOP facility will be devoted strictly to research, while clinical pathology services will continue to be carried out at Brigham and Women's.
In addition to scientific investigators, the center staff includes technicians, a research scientist, Ewa Sicinska, MD, a staff pathologist Stephen Finn, MD, PhD, a cytogeneticist Azra Ligon, PhD, and a lab manager, Michele Fabricant, PhD.
Michael Gimbrone, MD, Chairman of the Pathology Department at Brigham and Women's, commented that he was "Excited to see this new chapter in an already very collaborative relationship, and the CMOP will be a home for many new discoveries it's the bridge between basic science and clinical applications."
— Richard Saltus
richard_saltus@dfci.haravard.edu
