The U.S. cancer charity Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C), the Dutch Cancer Society (KWF Kankerbestrijding), and the American Association for Cancer Research have awarded the first Sta Op Tegen Kanker International Translational Cancer Research Grant to the Dutch Center for Personalized Cancer Treatment, a collaboration between the Netherlands Cancer Institute, Erasmus MC and University Medical Center (UMC) Utrecht.
Sta Op Tegen Kanker is a Dutch television fundraising event, and the four-year grant worth €1.2 million ($1.4 million) has come from the November 2010 show. The project will look at the use of DNA analysis in selecting personalized cancer treatments for patients. The team will create DNA profiles from samples taken from clinical studies of patients with breast and colorectal cancer, before and after treatment, and link them with treatment outcomes.
Emile E. Voest of UMC Utrecht said: "We strongly feel that analyzing tumor DNA will not only help us to identify cancer patients that are more likely to respond to a specific anti-cancer drug but also avoid exposing patients to a toxic drug that does not provide benefit. This Stand Up To Cancer grant will allow us to investigate the value of DNA-guided treatment."
- read the press release