Home » Education / Outreach » Junior Investigators » Program for Postdocs » Announcement

Document Actions

Announcement

Inter-Center Laboratories for Training Opportunities and Collaborative Visits for Junior Investigators

Only junior investigators associated with NCI sponsored programs, the Integrative Cancer Biology Program and the Tumor Microenvironment Program, are eligible to participate in this program.

Background
The mission of the Division of Cancer Biology (DCB) of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) is to ensure continuity and stability in basic cancer research, while encouraging and facilitating the emergence of new ideas, concepts, technologies and identification of roadblocks that limit the progress of research. DCB achieves these goals by promoting a balance between the continued support of existing research areas and selective support of emerging research areas or experimental tools. The expansion of new research areas is encouraged through a range of workshops, initiatives and funding mechanisms sponsored by the DCB.
Among the various initiatives within the DCB, are the Integrative Cancer Biology Program (ICBP) and the Tumor Microenvironment Network (TMEN):

The ICBP initiative focuses on the analysis of cancer as a complex biological system. The program brings clinical and basic cancer researchers together with researchers from mathematics, physics, information technology, imaging sciences, and computer science to work on key questions in cancer biology. The ICBP strives to develop this field through several approaches: (1) the establishment of training programs for junior investigators to provide a foundation in the integrative disciplines, (2) the exposure of junior investigators to techniques within the disciplines of the integrative/systems biology field which their formal training may not have included, and (3) the dissemination of active and gained knowledge through an extensive outreach program.
The TMEN initiative is directed at (1) developing critical resources and reagents, (2) developing novel technologies, (3) training of young investigators as well as investigators new to the field, and (4) outreach activities to ensure dissemination of such resources and technologies to the broader research community. It is intended that such an infrastructure will not only establish repositories of critical reagents, resources, and information, but also promote and facilitate interdisciplinary collaborations and progress in understanding the role of host stroma in tumorigenesis.
Overview
To enhance the training aspects of junior investigators who are entering the fields of integrative cancer biology or tumor microenvironment, the NCI-ICBP and TMEN offer a training initiative designated as “Inter-Center Training Opportunities and Collaborative Visits for Junior Investigators” (referred to in this document as “exchange program”).

Junior investigators (e.g., postdoctoral fellows, research associates and other junior scientists) within the ICBP and TMEN consortia, will benefit from the exchange program by having opportunities to master and exchange techniques and/or analyze series of samples, tasks that could not otherwise be performed in their “home” laboratory settings. Further, the exchange program would provide cross-fertilization of ideas about the multi and diverse disciplines which are embedded in the fields of integrative cancer biology (e.g., cancer biology, computational modeling, data integration and mathematics) and tumor microenvironment (e.g., mechanisms of tumor-stroma interactions, composition of the stroma in normal tissues, role in tumor initiation, progression, and metastasis).

Junior investigators will be paired with a participating ICBP or TMEN Center based on their research interests and needs. Through hands-on laboratory work, mathematical and computational modeling, seminars, journal clubs, and informal discussions, the junior investigators will gain a broader understanding and appreciation of major questions currently under investigation as well as the novel approaches being used within the ICBP and TMEN Centers.

Two unique features, pertinent to the ICBP consortium need to be underscored: (1) Members and associates of the nine ICBP Centers are pioneers in the utilization of integrated experimental biology using mathematical and computational modeling to gain new insights into the biology and management of cancer. The ultimate goal of the ICBP program is to integrate the knowledge gained from individual research areas or scales, and then to apply the multi-scale information to detection, prevention and treatment of the cancer disease. (2) The multi-scale approach to the cancer problem requires a cadre of experts; the required expertise and resources reside in each of the nine ICBP Centers thus each Center is uniquely qualified to act as a participating “host” laboratory.

Similarly, a unique feature pertinent to the TMEN network needs to be highlighted: Members and associates in the nine TMEN Centers form a cadre of experts in this new, multi-disciplinary field. The areas of expertise required in this program include pathology, cancer biology, cell biology, oncology, bioengineering, and bioinformatics. The investigators in the individual TMEN programs focus on defining mechanisms of tumor-stroma interactions, as well as on studying the normal tissue microenvironment, as a pre-requisite for understanding the microenvironment of wounded tissues and tumor tissues.

Participating ‘host” Centers
A list of participating ICBP “host” Centers can be found in Appendix A; participating TMEN “host” Centers are listed in Appendix B.

Purpose of the Program:
The NCI intends the exchange program will the benefit of the entire cancer biology research community as it will generate a nucleus of junior investigators who will help seed the fields of integrative cancer biology and tumor microenvironment, benefiting cancer research throughout the United States by expanding the number of investigators in these under-studied areas.

Description
The program supports visits of one to six weeks in duration to a “host” ICBP or TMEN Center. The purpose of the visit would provide junior investigators opportunities to master and exchange techniques and/or analyze series of samples, tasks that could not otherwise carried out in their “home” laboratory. Further, the collaborative visits would provide a cross-fertilization of ideas pertaining to the multi and diverse disciplines which comprise the field of integrative cancer biology (e.g., cancer biology, computational modeling, data integration and mathematics) or tumor microenvironment (e.g., mechanisms of tumor-stroma interactions, composition of the stroma in normal tissues, role in tumor initiation, progression, and metastasis).
Eligibility
Application to the NCI-ICBP/TMEN Inter-Center Training Opportunities and Collaborative Visits for Junior Investigators is open to postdoctoral fellows, research associates and other junior scientists who are currently associated with an ICBP or TMEN Center. A junior investigator is not eligible to apply to this program if he/she presently holds or has previously held independent funding.
Award
For each collaborative visit, the selected junior investigator will receive a housing allowance up to $100 per day for a duration of one to six weeks. Travel to and from the “host” research laboratory will be covered up to $600. International travel will be considered on an individual basis.

Application and Submission Process
1. The Principal Investigator (PI) of a “home” ICBP or TMEN Center should:
identify a junior investigator to participate in the exchange program
identify and discuss a proposed project with the PI of a “host” Center
obtain the “host” PI’s approval of the project and the time of visit
2. Junior investigators may initiate requests to participate in the exchange program by discussing possible projects and “host” Center laboratories with the PI of their "home" Center.
3. After the Junior Investigator has obtained approval of both the “home” and “host” PIs, he/she should:
prepare a one to two page written proposal describing the purpose of the exchange
complete the application form (please access the form at: http://web.ncifcrf.gov/careers/Jr_Invest)
The proposal and application form should be submitted online at http://web.ncifcrf.gov/careers/Jr_Invest
4. Proposals may be submitted any time during the year; there are no deadlines for submissions.
Selection Process and Award Notification
Proposals will be reviewed by a Committee composed of members of the ICBP – Education Committee, representatives from the TMEN program, NCI staff and a representative of SAIC-Frederick.
Acceptance into the exchange program will be announced in a timely fashion.

APPENDIX A

ICBP Centers

Case Western Reserve University

University Hospital of Cleveland
Principal Investigator: Timothy Kinsella, M.D.
Website: http://www.case.edu/med/icbp/

Description of Center: DNA repair and its relation to drugs: a clinical perspective.

Case ICBP is working towards unraveling the role of DNA repair pathways in the processing of clinically important nucleotide analogs. Case ICBP center is serving to create a set of DNA repair models which can be used in combination with other centers to facilitate the understanding of cancer therapeutics at higher levels of organization.

Dana Farber Cancer Institute
Principal Investigator: Todd Golub, M.D.

Website: http://www.broad.mit.edu/cancer/collaborations/icbp/

The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard ICBP center focuses on creating predictive models for cancer defined in terms of cellular modules (such as pathways). We will focus specifically on the kinases, which are arguably the most critical modules in establishing and maintaining cancer cell survival. More specifically, we propose to create computational models able to predict kinase activity in a biological sample (cell line or tumor). Focusing initially on each of the approximately 100 tyrosine kinases, the predictive models will consist of ‘cellular signatures’ (distinctive sets of co-expressed genes) that can accurately predict:

whether a given kinase pathway is activated in the sample;
whether a given kinase pathway is essential for viability; and
whether a given chemical or drug modulates the kinase pathway.

Duke University

Principal Investigator: Joseph Nevins, Ph.D.
Website: http://icbp.genome.duke.edu/

The Duke Integrative Cancer Biology Program is focused on the development of data and computational tools that will substantially advance our understanding of critical cell signaling pathways. We are focusing primarily on the Rb-E2F pathway with additional interest in the intersection with Ras, Myc and p53. The activity of these pathways is critical to the control of normal cell proliferation, and many aspects of their deregulation are crucial to the development of human cancer. The Duke ICBP is developing an integrated approach to analysis of genomic-scale measures of gene expression, incorporating protein interaction analysis together with DNA sequence predictions, whose interpretation will underlie advances towards a comprehensive understanding of the complex regulatory network
comprised of these fundamental pathways that contribute to human cancer.

E. O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Principal Investigator: Joe W. Gray, Ph.D.

Website: http://icbp.lbl.gov/index.htm

The goal of the Integrative Cancer Biology Program (ICBP) Award entitled "Systems based predictions of responses to cancer therapy" is to develop experimental and computational strategies to predict individual responses to therapies targeted along the Raf-MEK-ERK signaling pathway. The overall thrust of this program is the integration of experimental and computational approaches towards the understanding of cancer biology using both 2D and 3D cell culture models. While experimental data are supported by cell-based assays and expression data, in silico models leverage deterministic and probabilistic techniques to support the integrative cancer biology program.

Massachusetts General Hospital

Principal Investigator: Thomas Deisboeck, M.D.
Website: http://www.cvit.org

CViT is building the first web-based community dedicated to computational and
mathematical cancer modeling and the IT infrastructure to support it, including
a digital model repository. CViT's long term goal is the design and development
of a module-based tool-kit for cancer research.

Guided by a complex systems approach, the resulting Virtual Tumor will integrate
multiple levels of information about cancer, including molecular, cellular,
tissue, organ, and patient clinical data.

Both CViT platform and Virtual Tumor tool set will allow mathematicians and
clinicians to interact online to make testable predictions with the goal of
improving the prevention, diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy of cancer.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
Principal Investigator: Doug Lauffenburger, Ph.D.

Website: http://csbi.mit.edu/research/projects/icbp

The research in the MIT Integrative Cancer Biology Program is organized into three projects, each involving scientists working at different levels of analysis - cancer biology, cell biology and computational modeling. The members of each project interact closely to integrate these different approaches to understand the underlying molecular and cellular processes that govern each process and to develop testable models to drive future understanding, analysis, and intervention into those processes and their malfunctions in cancer.

The focus of the MIT Integrative Cancer Biology Program is to advance the state of the art in cancer biology beyond the analysis of data to the construction of quantitative, predictive and testable, computational and mathematical models based on that data.

The MIT ICBP center complements those of other efforts within the ICBP program and the larger NCI through its focus on three thrust areas that cover three key processes involved in cancer progression (i) mitogenic signaling networks, (ii) DNA repair, and (iii) migration signaling networks. The MIT ICBP center also has a strong emphasis on producing the next generation of young investigators trained in interdisciplinary investigations of cancer.

The Ohio State University
Principal Investigator: Tim H-M Huang, Ph.D.

Websites: http://icbp.med.ohio-state.edu/
http://mbi.osu.edu/
http://bioinformatics.med.ohio-state.edu/

Our Center assembles an integrated team of scientists to uncover how the epigenome interacts with the genome in the genesis and the progression of human cancers, at both the global level and the single gene level, to provide opportunities for personalized medicine in cancer prevention and recurrence.

The OSU-ICBP Center uses cutting-edge microarray technologies coupling with novel bioinformatics and computational approaches to unravel the role of epigenetic alternations in human cancers and their microenvironment in the dysregulated cellular and molecular functions observed in this disease.

The OSU-ICBP team systematically amasses information on the cancer epigenome and provides informatics tools to the ICBP and the cancer community to integrate this new body of information with global genomic data to shed light on the complex nature of cancer biology.

Stanford University School of Medicine

Principal Investigator: Sylvia Plevritis, Ph.D.
Website: http://icbp.stanford.edu

Stanford ICBP aims to foster collaborations in computational cancer biology between researchers from disciplines as diverse as oncology, statistics, aeronautics, computer sciences, and others.

Stanford is a major clinical center for lymphoma, and one of our major aims is to understand the mechanisms driving the transformation of follicular lymphoma to the more aggressive diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. We also work closely with oncologists studying transgenic mouse models of cancer.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center

Principal Investigator: Vito Quaranta, M.D.
Website: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/VICBC

Cancer is a multifactorial disease too complex for intuitive understanding. Its outcome is the result of a complex interplay between conflicting factors, which are specific to different cancers, and different patients. Thus, cancer is particularly suited for integrative approaches, such as mathematical modeling. The Vanderbilt Integrative Cancer Biology Center (VICBC) fuses several disciplines (BioMathematics, Cancer Biology, Training, Bioengineering and Cancer Imaging) in the quest to develop mathematical models of Cancer Invasion that should enable a rational approach for accurate diagnostic staging and therapeutic targeting of cancer. Our focus is on the parameterization of the Mathematical Models of Cancer (i.e., hybrid discrete continuous) at the cellular, multicellular and organ biological scales. This approach fits well with that of other ICBP Centers that focus on molecular and subcellular scales.

________________________________________________________________________________

APPENDIX B

TMEN Centers

Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University

Project title: Novel Methods for Detection Cell Interactions in the Tumor Microenvironment

Principal Investigator: John S. Condeelis, Ph.D.

Tel. 718-430-4068

CONDEELI@AECOM.YU.EDU

Baylor College of Medicine

Project title: Co-evolution of the Reactive Microenvironment in Prostate Cancer Progression

Principal Investigator: David R. Rowley, Ph.D.
Tel. 713-798-6220

DROWLEY@BCM.TMC.EDU