A world-class team of research institutions focused on finding a cure for prostate cancer
The Pacific Northwest Prostate Cancer SPORE is a group of four prominent research institutions working together toward a common goal of eradicating prostate cancer. This work begins with gaining a better understanding of this disease.
Who We Are, What We’ve Done, Where We’re Going
In 2002 the National Cancer Institute, a branch of the National Institutes of Health, awarded the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center a five-year, $12.7 million grant to lead a multi-center, five-year investigation into the genetic mechanisms of prostate cancer progression. Understanding how and why prostate cancer can turn deadly is key to developing therapies that may effectively treat men with recurrent or advanced prostate cancer, for which there is no cure.
Known as the Pacific NW Prostate Cancer SPORE (Specialized Programs of Research Excellence), the initiative involved more than 50 investigators in Seattle and Vancouver, B.C., and was led by Principal Investigator, Paul Lange, MD, Professor and Chair of Urology at the UW School of Medicine and an Affiliate Investigator in Fred Hutchinson’s Public Health Sciences Division. The Co-Principal Investigator of the SPORE was Dr. Janet L. Stanford, PhD, Member and Research Professor in Fred Hutchinson’s Public Health Sciences Division and Head of its Program in Prostate Cancer Research.
Participating institutions in Seattle were Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, the University of Washington and the Institute for Systems Biology. Vancouver partners were the University of British Columbia and its affiliate, The Prostate Centre at Vancouver General Hospital.
In September 2006, Principal Investigator Dr. Peter Nelson, Member in Fred Hutchinson’s Division of Human Biology and Co-Principal Investigators Stanford and Lange submitted a competing renewal application to continue this program for 5 more years. This renewal application was successfully funded with a new five-year, $11.8 million grant to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center that started in September, 2007, and includes three of the original institutions.
