The UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center received a couple of shots in the arm last month.
First, it was announced that researchers at the center received two grants totaling $9.1 million from the National Cancer Institute to advance liquid biopsy technologies for the early detection of cancer.
Then came news of the hire of Aditya Bardia, a renowned breast medical oncologist, who joined David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the Jonsson cancer center, where he will assume several leadership roles across the institution.
The National Cancer Institute grants are going to research teams led by Jasmine Zhou, a professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at the Geffen School and a scientist at the Jonsson cancer center. The teams have been honing a cancer detection technology known as liquid biopsy, a non-invasive medical test that uses a small volume of a patient’s blood. That sample can give researchers insight into the genetic mutations, alterations and other molecular changes associated with the presence of cancer.
Effective liquid biopsies have been greatly sought after, since they are minimally invasive.
“With the support from the grants, we will be advancing current tests by creating comprehensive approaches that combines multimodality information to detect liver, colorectal, liver, lung, and stomach cancer early,” Zhou said.
The first National Cancer Institute grant is going to a team exclusively within the Geffen School and the Jonsson cancer center. Besides Zhou, other principals on the team include Steven-Huy Han, Samuel French and Vatche Agopian. They are seeking to develop and validate a method to integrate blood, imaging, and clinical data for the early detection of liver cancer.
The second grant focuses on improving the early detection of various cancers using the cell-free DNA methylome to detect and locate colon, gastric, liver, and lung cancers. Zhou is again one of the principal investigators, along with Wenyuan Li. The two are joined by Robert Bresalier from University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
This team will also collaborate with an unnamed industry partner to optimize the technology for wider clinical use and implement it in a secure cloud-computing platform for decentralized testing.
With the hire of Bardia, effective last week, the Jonsson Cancer Center and the Geffen School are seeking to boost the development and delivery of individualized cancer therapies.
“Dr. Bardia brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise in integrating clinical and basic science, which will significantly advance our research capabilities for a disease that globally impacts millions every year,” said Dennis Slamon, chief of hematology-oncology and director of clinical and translational research at the Jonsson cancer center.
