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University of Arizona Receives
$1.5 Million Grant to Study
Firefighters’ Long-Term Cancer Risk
Researchers at the University of
Arizona’s Mel and Enid Zuckerman
College of Public Health received $1.5
million in funding from the Depart-
ment of Homeland Security Federal
Emergency Management Agency’s
Assistance to Firefighters Grant Pro-
gram – a collaborative project to study
long-term cancer risk in firefighters.
Cancer is a leading cause of
death among firefighters as a result
of exposure to carcinogens through
inhalation of smoke, diesel exhaust,
and other chemical gases, vapors,
and particulates, as well as through
skin contamination.
“We still don’t understand
which exposures are the most
important and the specific cel-
lular mechanisms by which the
exposures are causing cancer,” said
Jefferey L. Burgess, MD, MS, MPH,
associate dean for research and pro-
fessor at the University of Arizona.
“This information is necessary to
determine the best ways to help
prevent cancer in firefighters.”
The initial three-year grant will
help build on recent studies of can-
cer prevention in firefighters being
Fred Hutchinson Researchers to Assess Protein
Assays for the Cancer Moonshot Initiative
As part of the Cancer Moonshot initia-
tive, the APOLLO (Applied Proteoge-
nomics Organizational Learning and
Outcomes) Network – a partnership of
the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the
U.S. Department of Defense, and the
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs –
selected the Fred Hutchinson Cancer
Research Center’s Paulovich Labora-
tory to develop protein panel tests
that could match patients to the most
effective drugs to treat their cancers.
“Genomic profiles alone, while
advancing our ability to predict cancer
responses to therapy, cannot in many
cases provide sufficient information
to determine which types of cancers
respond best to which therapeutics,”
said Amanda Paulovich, MD, PhD,
a member of the Clinical Research
Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer
Research Center and a professor in the
Department of Medicine/Division of
Oncology at the University of Wash-
ington School of Medicine. “There’s
a growing appreciation of the value
of proteomic approaches to studying
cancer and how they are complemen-
tary to genomic approaches.”
The team at the Paulovich
Laboratory has pioneered targeted,
reproducible proteomic assays that
improve upon traditional laboratory
methods for measuring proteins.
These assays are built on multiple
6
ASH Clinical News
reaction-monitoring mass spectrom-
etry, which is widely used in clinical
chemistry for measuring metabolites.
“With APOLLO, we believe that
by merging our grasp of the genome
with a better understanding of its
connection to the proteome, or pro-
teogenomics, scientists will have the
knowledge, including new regimens
and better tools, to assemble the
puzzle of precision-based medicine
and its translation toward patient
care,” said Henry Rodriguez, PhD,
MBA, director of the NCI’s Office of
Cancer Clinical Proteomics Research.
Source: Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center press release,
February 6, 2017.
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