Frances Williams Preston Laboratories at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center
Nashville, TN

Harold L. Moses, M.D., Director, Frances Williams Preston Laboratories
Jennifer A. Pietenpol, Ph.D., Director, Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center

T.J. Martell Foundation Funded Research at Frances Williams Preston Laboratories at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center

The marriage of music and medicine is celebrating its crystal anniversary – the T.J. Martell Foundation and the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center just marked 15 years in partnership through the Frances Williams Preston Laboratories.

These “laboratories without walls” were created in honor of Frances Preston, a music industry icon and president of the Martell Foundation's board. Importantly, they served as an important cornerstone in the creation of the then-new Vanderbilt Cancer Center. Since that time, the invaluable support of the Martell Foundation has led to important discoveries in the fight against cancer and built an important foundation for even greater advances in the years ahead.

We have remained true to our commitment to deploy the resources provided by the Martell Foundation in ways that will have the greatest impact, to explore the most innovative frontiers of cancer research, from nascent research in genetic approaches in the labs’ early days to our current focus on proteomics and early detection and prevention.

Directed by Dr. Harold L. Moses, the founding director of our cancer center, the Preston Laboratories include the work of 20 senior scientists with nearly $40 million in active funding from the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Defense and the pharmaceutical industry.

A sampling of recent discoveries reported by these teams, made possible by the support from the T.J. Martell Foundation, include:

·        Discovery of a small protein that specifically recognizes and binds to tumors responding to chemotherapy and a technique to “tag” this protein with a light-emitting molecule so that doctors can “see” tumor response to treatment. This work by Dr. Dennis Hallahan and his colleagues may offer a new strategy to determine whether a treatment is working within days of starting it, instead of weeks.

• A clue to why cancer patients from the southeastern United States who are treated with the drug known commercially as Erbitux are far more likely to suffer a potentially life-threatening allergic reaction than patients in other regions of the country. A Vanderbilt-Ingram team found that many of those patients already have a pre-existing antibody that reacts with the drug. Based on this research by Dr. Christine Chung and her colleagues, a commercial assay is being developed to allow physicians to test patients for the troubling antibody before deciding to use the drug.

• Insight into one of oncology’s most frustrating challenges – the failure of treatments to completely wipe out advanced cancers, leaving patients vulnerable to future recurrence and progression. A Vanderbilt-Ingram team led by Preston Laboratory director Moses found evidence that a treatment-induced increase in a growth factor called TGF-beta serves as a survival signal for cancer cells, allowing them to withstand therapy and later grow and spread. This work suggests that inhibitors of this growth factor might be used in combination with chemotherapy or radiation to improve the tumor-killing effect of therapy.

In addition, substantial progress is being made in the Southern Community Cohort Study, a historic prospective population-based study designed to understand and address why residents in the Southeastern United States, and African-Americans in particular, face a higher likelihood of developing and dying from cancer than other groups. Enrollment of some 90,000 people into the study is expected to be completed in the coming months. Preliminary analyses are being done, and some clues for further exploration are already being uncovered. For instance, early data suggests that vitamin D deficiency among African-Americans may be linked to a higher risk of colon cancer, suggesting a potential way to intervene. This study, which has benefited from Martell Foundation support, will yield a treasure trove of data for understanding not only cancer but diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease and other ailments that disproportionately impact Southerners and African-Americans.

The impact of the T.J. Martell Foundation is felt by virtually every investigator at our Cancer Center as we use these critical funds to support key people and key technologies that benefit a multitude of laboratories and projects. These include investments in proteomics, DNA microarray and biostatistical infrastructure. We also have invested strategically in specific high-risk/high-payoff projects.

This strategy has generated a healthy return on investment – the more than $15 million we’ve received has been leveraged into more than $100 million in ongoing support from the National Cancer Institute and other sources. It has enabled us to remain remarkably competitive for grant dollars even in the face of dwindling federal resources available to fund biomedical research through the National Institutes of Health. Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center is currently ranked 7^th in the country in terms of competitive research dollars from the National Cancer Institute, an objective measure of scientific rigor – and we owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the Martell Foundation for that success.

We are honored to offer this brief update on our work in the Preston Laboratories, and we look forward to future discoveries to allow better treatment of patients with many types of cancers and to find cancers early or prevent them altogether. The researchers and physician-scientists of the Preston Laboratories – and most importantly the patients and families impacted by cancer today and in the future – remain ever grateful to the Martell Foundation for its contributions to our work and to the worldwide fight against cancer.