Earlier this week, several CCSB researchers attended and presented posters at the
60th Annual Meeting of the Radiation Research Society (RRS) held in Las
Vegas, NV, September 21-24. This annual meeting is an important
opportunity for investigators in all areas of the radiation research
community to come together and discuss new and important findings. CCSB
members Lynn Hlatky, Philip Hahnfeldt, Afshin Beheshti, Dohoon Kim,
and Mamta Naidu participated in this exciting meeting and exhibited
posters representing some of the ground-breaking research in
radiation being conducted at the CCSB.
In addition, CCSB Director Lynn Hlatky was selected to give a talk on Systems
Biology to early stage radiation researchers at the RRS
Scholars-in-Training Workshop held the day before the annual
meeting on September 20.
Welcome !
The Center of Cancer Systems Biology (CCSB) is one of twelve national Centers for Cancer Systems Biology funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute's Integrative Cancer Biology Program (ICBP). Our CCSB brings together diverse researchers from biological, mathematical, physical, and clinical backgrounds to better understand the molecular and tissue-level events underlying cancer progression and development. The team of lab investigators and research staff assembled at the CCSB is working to develop novel approaches to the cancer problem at both the molecular and the systems levels. Since its founding in 2006, the CCSB has become an internationally competitive research and training facility and research data repository in cancer systems biology.
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For the past several months, CCSB Assistant Investigator and Research Instructor at Tufts University School of Medicine Kathleen
Wilkie has been working hard as co-chair planning the 2014 ICBP Early Stage Investigators (ESI)
in Cancer Systems Biology Steering Committee Meeting. To enhance
the training of researchers who are entering the
field of cancer systems biology, the NCI's Integrative Cancer
Biology Program (ICBP) supports this annual
meeting for junior investigators associated with the ICBP initiative. These
meetings focus on topics not typically included in an investigators’ formal
training — such as career development in academia or industry
and funding
opportunities particularly relevant for early stage scientists
— as
well as serve as a networking and communication opportunity for each
of the twelve ICBP centers. Dr. Wilkie will be joined by Lili Ma,
Afshin Beheshti, and collaborator Michael La Croix in representing
the CCSB at this meeting September 4–5 in Cambridge, MA.
For the 4th consecutive year, the CCSB has been pleased to host an ICBP Summer Cancer Research
Fellow. Our 2014 student, Rishee Batra, a junior at the
University of Michigan, just completed his 9-week placement with us and did excellent work on a project exploring
cancer cell response to systemic host effects. Working closely with
mentors Christine Briggs,
Lili Ma, and Kathleen
Wilkie, Rishee spent
the summer examining the role of mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) in the
development of cancer cachexia. (Cachexia is a serious complication
of cancer that is defined as a severe loss of body mass,
predominantly composed of fat and muscle.) As culmination of the
project, Rishee presented the findings of this research to fellow summer students and ICBP participants in a poster entitled,
“Tumor-Host Tissue Interactions Through MSCs: Implications for
Cancer Cachexia.”
Download Rishee's poster [approx. 2 MB PDF]
Philip Hahnfeldt, CCSB Senior Investigator and Associate Professor of
Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine, has been invited to
speak at the upcoming 1st ONCOLille Symposium on Tumor
Dormancy on June 26, 2014 in Lille, France. Bringing together six internationally recognized leaders
in the field to deliver seminars addressing various aspects of tumor
dormancy, this inaugural ONCOLille Symposium will focus on the main
basic and translational science approaches currently
investigated in the tumor dormancy arena. Dr. Hahnfeldt's
presentation is entitled “Systems Biology and Tumor
Dormancy.”
The March 2014 issue of the journal Radiation Research
highlights work of several CCSB
investigators on the cover. The article, "Proton irradiation augments the
suppression of tumor progression observed with advanced age",
describes our investigation into how proton irradiation impacts tumor
advancement as a function of host age, particularly in light of the fact
that proton irradiation modulates fundamental biological processes
known to decrease with aging (e.g., angiogenesis and
immunogenicity). The findings, with both therapeutic and
carcinogenesis implications, suggest that old hosts exhibit a
reduced capacity to support tumor advancement, which can be further
reduced by proton irradiation.
Beheshti A, Peluso M, Lamont C, Hahnfeldt P, Hlatky L. Proton Irradiation Augments the Suppression of Tumor Progression Observed with Advanced Age. Radiat Res. 2014 Mar;181(3):272-83. Epub 2014 Feb 25.
Article abstract | Read more about CCSB's work in aging and carcinogenesis
CCSB researcher Dr. Swati Girdhani and collaborator Dr. Rainer Sachs,
Professor Emeritus of Mathematics and Physics at University of
California Berkeley, spoke with Dr. Sylvain Costes in a special video
interview for the Radiation
Research Society podcast series. The conversation focused on the
current knowledge base in the field of proton radiation,
stemming from a review by Drs. Girdhani, Sachs, and Hlatky which
appeared in the March 2013 issue of Radiation Resarch and
which was featured on that issue's cover.
Girdhani S, Sachs R, Hlatky L. Biological effects of proton radiation: what we know and don't know. Radiat Res. 2013 Mar;179(3):257-72.
Video interview on Radiation Research Society website | Article abstract
Dr. Jonathan Tang and Dr. Sylvain Costes, co-founders of Exogen
Biotechnology and CCSB collaborators at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, were
among a select group of ten entrepreneurs invited to meet with French
President Francois Hollande during his February 12, 2014 visit to Silicon
Valley. During the visit, President Hollande was eager to learn about
biotech startups in the U.S. and their paths to success.
Exogen Biotechnology, Inc. is a health startup aimed at developing cutting-edge technologies for individuals to monitor damage to their DNA and to assess their DNA repair capacities for the purposes of personalized and preventive health care.
An article published by CCSB investigators in an April 2013 special
issue of Frontiers in Oncology has been cited as the journal's
third most viewed Oncology research article in 2013. The article,
by Drs. Enderling, Hlatky, and Hahnfeldt, is entitled “Cancer
stem cells: a minor cancer subpopulation that redefines global
cancer features” and appeared in a special issue on
Computational Models in Oncology: from Tumor Initiation to
Progression to Treatment, edited by K. A. Rejniak and H. Enderling. The article has been viewed over 1,000 times since its
publication on April 15, 2013!
Enderling H, Hlatky L, Hahnfeldt P. Cancer stem cells: a minor cancer subpopulation that redefines global cancer features. Front Oncol. 2013 Apr 15;3:76. PMCID: PMC3625721.
A recent manuscript co-authored by CCSB investigators has been
selected to be highlighted under the EDITOR'S PICKS column
on the Medical Physics Scitation site. Entitled
“Repopulation of interacting tumor cells during fractionated
radiotherapy: Stochastic modeling of the tumor control
probability”, the article looks at optimal treatment
planning for fractionated external beam radiation therapy in the
context of tumor repopulation, presenting a new stochastic tumor control probability (TCP)
model for repopulating “stem-like cancer cells” (SLCC)
within microvenironmental niches.
Fakir H, Hlatky L, Li H, Sachs R. Repopulation of interacting tumor cells during fractionated radiotherapy: Stochastic modeling of the tumor control probability. Med Phys. 2013 Dec;40(12):121716.