The SU2C Colorectal Cancer Health Equity Dream Team will identify communities near anchor institutions that serve minority and medically underserved communities, pinpoint the unique local needs of those areas and turn participating at-risk communities into “Stand Up To Cancer Zones” with high rates of colorectal cancer screening. The Dream Team will provide free colorectal cancer testing in the identified zones and will study screening completed via approved tests for colorectal cancer, including primarily colonoscopy and at-home stool tests that analyze fecal DNA and/or blood. The Team also will deploy community health action teams (CHATs) to accompany patients from screening to treatment, and study the effectiveness of this approach. The research will aim to develop better approaches to colorectal cancer interception.

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The SU2C Health Equity Breakthrough Team Research Grant Program endeavors to address the issue of low participation by racial and ethnic minority populations in cancer research despite the disproportionate burden of disease in those groups. Health disparities research has traditionally been fragmented, with research in the social sciences exploring socioeconomic and cultural barriers to access, and the biological sciences studying genetic and environmental drivers of disease. This Breakthrough Team combines new perspectives integrating social science domains with clinical research.

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The goal of this team is to develop an effective treatment for T-cell lymphoma, a rare cancer of the blood and immune system for which few therapeutic options currently exist. The team is using powerful new immunotherapy approaches to both destroy T cells that have become malignant and prepare patients, when indicated, for successful stem cell transplants to contain or cure the cancer. By conducting clinical trials, the team hopes to create durable responses with therapies that can be applied to a wide variety of T-cell lymphoma malignancies.

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The St. Baldrick’s Foundation–SU2C Pediatric Cancer Dream Team is a collaboration among pediatric cancer researchers in the largely disparate disciplines of cancer genomics and immunotherapeutics. The team focuses on developing new, targeted immunotherapeutics―ways to engage the body’s own immune system in the fight against childhood cancers that are the most difficult to cure. This team’s work builds on research done by the first
SU2C–St. Baldrick’s Pediatric Cancer Dream Team, which was initially funded in July 2013.

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The SU2C Multiple Myeloma Dream Team is focusing on precursor myeloma conditions in patients at a high risk for the disease. Greater knowledge of these conditions, combined with a better understanding of the molecular and immune factors that lead to disease progression, may yield effective strategies that intercept cancer progression and improve survival.

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The SU2C–Lustgarten Foundation Pancreatic Cancer Interception Dream Team’s goal is to intercept pancreatic cancer in high-risk patients through careful early detection and targeted immune prevention. Working first with relatives of people with pancreatic cancer, this team seeks to create a test to screen people at risk for pancreatic cancer to potentially detect the cancer earlier and offer the most effective treatment options to patients.

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With innovative technologies and unique patient populations, the SU2C–LUNGevity Foundation–American Lung Association (ALA) Lung Cancer Interception Dream Team seeks to understand how early lung cancer develops and is testing methods to block this development using several complementary approaches. The insights gained from this team’s work will enable the medical and research communities to make major strides in the effort to thwart lung cancer before it occurs.

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The SU2C Colorectal Cancer Dream Team is taking a broad-spectrum approach by addressing three complementary areas of research that have the potential to impact the treatment of all stages of colorectal cancer. The first two areas of research examine the potential impact of immunotherapy and of targeted therapy; the third area of study evaluates strategies to target different colorectal cancer subtypes.

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The SU2C–Cancer Research UK (CRUK)–Lustgarten Foundation Pancreatic Cancer Dream Team is working to improve survival of pancreatic cancer patients, with a goal of at least doubling the one-year survival rate in advanced pancreatic cancer from 35% to more than 70%. The team also aims to maintain remission in patients who have responded to treatment, extending and enhancing the lives of people with this disease.

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The SU2C–American Cancer Society (ACS) Lung Cancer Dream Team has established a collaborative, scientifically rigorous, multidisciplinary program that brings together two highly promising treatment approaches: targeted therapy―in this case targeting the KRAS gene―and immunotherapy. This combined approach should lead to novel treatments that will markedly improve outcomes for KRAS-mutant non-small cell lung cancer patients.

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With a combined focus on treatment and prevention, the SU2C–Ovarian Cancer Research Alliance (OCRA)– National Ovarian Cancer Coalition (NOCC) Ovarian Cancer Dream Team concentrates on developing new therapies that target DNA repair. These potentially apply to a much larger group of women beyond those with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations. By screening for inherited mutations in genes linked to DNA repair, the team works to identify women at high risk for ovarian cancer whose lives might be saved by preventive measures.

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The SU2C–Dutch Cancer Society (DCS) Colorectal Cancer Early Detection Dream Team has set out to rework and improve the existing fecal immunochemical test (FIT) for colorectal cancer, which fails to detect approximately one-third of cancers and more than two-thirds of precancerous lesions. The team’s overarching goal is to move highly sensitive molecular testing for colorectal cancer to the next level so it can be regularly used in clinical settings.

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Epigenetic therapy is an approach to cancer treatment that involves switching key genes on or off to help destroy cancer cells. The Van Andel Institute (VAI)–Stand Up To Cancer Epigenetics Dream Team II, funded by the Van Andel Institute, continues the original Epigenetics Dream Team’s work to restore normal function to damaged epigenetic mechanisms. To do this, the team employs clinical trials exploring immune sensitization, chemo sensitization, and novel target strategies.

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The SU2C–Lustgarten Foundation Pancreatic Cancer Dream Team is focused on pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA), one of the deadliest types of cancer. This team is working to understand the barriers to treatment that this type of cancer presents, in order to develop new therapies that will effectively treat it.

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The SU2C–Dutch Cancer Society (DCS) Tumor Organoids Dream Team has developed a groundbreaking technology that allows oncology samples from patients to be maintained and grown in the laboratory. These growing cancers, called tumor organoids, provide an unprecedented opportunity to combine science’s ability to sequence the DNA of tumors from individual patients with laboratory studies to see if the cancer will respond to or resist specific anticancer treatments. The organoids allow studies of sensitivity and resistance to a large number of anticancer drugs, ultimately helping doctors bring better and more targeted treatments to cancer patients.

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The SU2C–St. Baldrick’s Foundation Pediatric Cancer Dream Team is a collaboration among pediatric cancer researchers in the largely disparate disciplines of cancer genomics and immunotherapeutics. The team focuses on developing new, targeted immunotherapeutics―ways to engage the body’s own immune system in the fight against the most difficult-to-cure childhood cancers.

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The goal of this SU2C–Cancer Research Institute (CRI) Cancer Immunology Dream Team is to induce antitumor responses in immune cells called T cells. The team has taken two approaches to this: blocking the mechanisms that inhibit T cell activity (thereby allowing the T cells to expand, infiltrate, and kill cancer cells) and generating large quantities of T cells in the laboratory, enhancing their cancer-killing abilities, and then transferring them back to patients.

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Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among men in North America. The SU2C–Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF) Prostate Dream Team hypothesizes that treatment for one type of the disease, metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, becomes ineffective when certain cellular pathways are activated. The team is working to find ways to shut down these pathways and preserve the effectiveness of the treatment, thus improving outcomes for patients.

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Recent studies have demonstrated tremendous diversity in the genetic makeup of metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC). The SU2C−Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF) Prostate Dream Team is sequencing patient DNA and systematically comparing it with patient response to therapies. The aim is to identify biomarkers and predictors that will help physicians determine the best treatments for patients based on their molecular profiles.

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Melanoma patients have a type of cancer that generally falls into one of two groups, based on a gene call BRAF. The goal of the SU2C–Melanoma Research Alliance (MRA) Melanoma Dream Team is to examine the entire set of genetic instructions (called the genome) of metastatic melanoma patients whose tumors do not have mutations in their BRAF gene. The team wants to understand the characteristics of each patient’s genome in order to select therapies that are more precisely targeted to the individual.

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Interfering with the nutrients that support the growth of tumor cells has the potential to substantially improve the survival of patients with pancreatic cancer. This SU2C Pancreatic Dream Team is studying how to cut off the “fuel supply” that pancreatic tumors depend on. Of particular interest is whether these tumors require glucose or glutamine to survive, as other cells do. If so, this information can be used to help devise new, more effective therapeutic strategies.

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Epigenetic mechanisms help control the expression of genes—whether they are turned on or off—without affecting the genes’ DNA sequences themselves. Whether a cell becomes cancerous depends not only on its genome, but also on its epigenome. The goal of the SU2C Epigenetics Dream Team’s work is to test drugs that will change the epigenome to potentially treat many kinds of cancer.

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Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are extremely rare cancer cells that are shed into the blood from
primary or metastatic tumors. The SU2C Circulating Tumor Cell Dream Team has generated the prototype Herringbone-CTC-Chip, which allows initial molecular analysis of CTCs and enables pilot clinical trials in cancers of the lung, prostate, breast, and pancreas, as well as melanoma. It also lays the groundwork for the next-generation CTC-iChip.

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The scientists participating in the SU2C PI3K Dream Team are the pioneers who discovered the PI3K pathway—a complex chain of signals that helps regulate cell growth—and validated its role in human cancers. The goal of this Dream Team is to discover approaches that will predict which patients will respond positively to PI3K inhibitors, focusing on women’s cancers that have the PI3K mutation.

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The PASS Convergence Dream Team is testing ways to use the molecular characteristics of the tumor to predict which medicines should be prescribed preferentially and develop tests to distinguish specific tumor sub-types.

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The SU2C Breast Cancer Dream Team addresses the most significant issues related to the three major subtypes of breast cancer—ER positive, HER2 positive, and triple negative. It uses its findings to develop innovative and less toxic therapies with the potential to improve the treatment outcomes for women with this disease.

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This Dream Team is investigating a new way to treat metastatic breast cancer by interrupting the ability of breast cancer cells to manufacture the proteins they need to aggressively spread to organs beyond the breast. The new treatment, being tested for the first time in humans, strikes at the process that allows breast cancer to go from a localized problem to a potentially fatal disease. If successful, this work will open a new approach to the treatment of metastatic breast cancer.

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The SU2C Canada–Canadian Cancer Society (CCS) Breast Cancer Dream Team has accelerated the research and development of three new drugs intended to treat aggressive forms of breast cancer. The Dream Team’s approach, called targeted therapy, has been to identify and make use of characteristics in the cancer cells that distinguish them from normal body cells.

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The SU2C Canada Cancer Stem Cell Dream Team’s goal is to understand the abnormalities in cancer stem cells found in brain tumors, specifically glioblastomas in adults and children and posterior fossa ependymomas in infants. Team members are working to find vulnerabilities in these cells, to identify new drugs that may be effective against them, and to test these drugs in preclinical mouse models.

Learn more at StandUpToCancer.ca