NCI Creates Network of Clinical Proteomic Technology Centers for Cancer Research

The National Cancer Institute(NCI), part of theNational Institutes of Health, has announced funding for a major component of its $104 million, five-yearClinical Proteomic Technologies Initiative for Cancer(CPTI).

Awards totaling $35.5 million over five years will establish a collaborative network of five Clinical Proteomic Technology Assessment for Cancer (CPTAC) teams.

Each of these teams will bring complementary expertise to assess the full spectrum of measurement technologies for proteins and peptides relevant to clinical cancer research and practice.

CPTAC will guide and provide resources to the broader cancer research community.

The network's collaborative efforts will enable researchers conducting cancer-related protein research at different laboratories, to use proteomic technologies and methodologies to directly compare and analyze their work.

"Emerging proteomic technologies have potential to improve cancer diagnostics and treatment, but we must carefully, consistently, and systematically examine them at every major step in the measurement process, in order to realize their full potential," said NCI Director John E. Niederhuber, M.D

CPTAC awardees were chosen based, in part, on the broad expertise of their proteomic research teams and their familiarity with and regular use of a wide range of proteomic technologies.

这五个de CPTAC团队fine a cross-institutional and multidisciplinary network of assessment centers that will evaluate and compare different commercially-available proteomic platforms and analysis software packages in the context of their potential applicability to cancer.

They will also work together to develop a comprehensive approach to assess intra-platform and inter-laboratory variability in these measurement technologies.

Awardees include (in alphabetical order by the investigator leading the institutional team):

-Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, Mass:Steven A. Carr, Ph.D.
-University of California, San Francisco/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory:Susan J. Fisher, Ph.D.
-Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, Tenn.:Daniel C. Liebler, Ph.D.
-Purdue University, West Lafayette, Ind.:Fred E. Regnier, Ph.D.
-Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY:Paul Tempst, Ph.D.

"This program is a critical component of NCI's strategy for leveraging the diagnostic and therapeutic potential of proteomics for cancer patients," said NCI Deputy Director Anna D. Barker, Ph.D.

"I am confident that the complementary proteomic expertise of the awardees, and their commitment to inter-institutional collaboration and real-time data sharing, will enable the development of biomarkers to contribute to a new generation of molecularly-based interventions to diagnose, treat, and prevent cancer."

The multidisciplinary teams will conduct assessment of two major technologies currently used to analyze proteins and peptides - mass spectrometry and affinity capture platforms. Specific objectives of the CPTAC program teams include:

- Evaluating the performance of proteomic technology platforms and standardizing approaches to developing applications of these platforms

- Assessing proteomic platforms for their ability to analyze cancer-relevant proteomic changes in human clinical specimens

- Establishing systematic ways to standardize proteomic protocols and data analysis among different laboratories

- Developing and implementing uniform algorithms for sharing bioinformatics and proteomic data and analytical/data mining tools

- Developing well-characterized material and bioinformatics resources for the entire cancer research community.

"With this far-sighted program, NCI is taking on one of the most challenging tasks facing researchers in the proteomics field," said Lee Hartwell, Ph.D., president and director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Wash.

"This effort is absolutely essential if we are to accelerate the advancement of proteomics into clinical practice."

CPTAC is one of three major CPTI program components, all of which were developed over the past 2 years with input from the research community.
The other components include:

"Advanced Proteomic Platforms and Computational Sciences"

This program will support the development of tools and enabling technologies for protein and peptide measurement and support algorithm development and computational methods to interrogate emerging pre-processed data sets. Awards will be announced later this year.

"Clinical Proteomic Reagents Resource"

This program will serve as a central (virtual) source for reagents (chemical substances of sufficient purity for use in chemical analysis) for the scientific community.

The Resource will develop standard reagents, perform characterization, provide an interactive resource catalog through the cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid™ (caBIG™), and expedite acquisition and distribution of reagents and data on reagent performance. Awards and application process will be announced this year.

The three CPTI program components (CPTAC, Advanced Proteomic Platforms and Computational Sciences, and the Clinical Proteomic Reagents Resource) are integrated efforts by NCI to address the fundamental scientific requirements that must be met in order to realize the promise of proteomics for cancer diagnosis and therapy.