UA News

The Arizona Cancer Center’s Therapeutic Development Program has received a five-year, $6.5 million federal grant that will support research projects involving two new anticancer drugs.

The grant, awarded by the National Cancer Institute, is a renewal of the center’s longest running investigator-initiated grant, which has funded numerous drug development projects for 32 years. It

Under the leadership of the Arizona Cancer Center’s founding director, the late Sydney E. Salmon, this grant brought the Center’s current director, Dr. David Alberts, to The University of Arizona in 1975 to start a drug development program. The latest grant also involves collaborative research efforts with MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

“This NCI-funded grant has been the centerpiece of Arizona Cancer Center research funding for more than three decades,” Alberts said. “It is a national treasure in that it has continuously produced seminal data on new, active anticancer drugs and drug combinations for cancer treatment.”

During the past few years, funding from the grant has been used to develop two new anticancer drugs known as PX-12 and Imexon. Both drugs, which target cancer-causing proteins, are currently in early phase clinical trials. “The new drugs are designed to kill tumor cells by creating stress related to oxygen levels inside cancer cells, which is a novel mechanism for new anticancer drugs,” explains Robert T. Dorr, co-director of the center’s Therapeutic Development Program and principal investigator for the grant.

“We’re very thankful that we have the funding to continue our research, as well as the next phase of clinical trials for these two promising agents discovered right here at the Arizona Cancer Center,” Dorr said. “We’ll also be able to study the use of new imaging techniques in drug development research and treatment, and we plan to generate approximately six to seven more new anticancer drugs.”

PX-12 targets a cancer-causing protein that is overexpressed in colon, pancreatic, gastric and lung cancers. This drug was developed by Garth Powis, formerly of the Arizona Cancer Center and now at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Powis is leader of the first project, which will investigate the activity of other new anticancer drugs in the same family as PX-12.

Imexon was developed by Dorr; Evan M. Hersh, UA professor of microbiology and immunology; and Salmon. This drug first showed activity against multiple myeloma and is being tested in patients with melanoma, lung, breast and prostate cancers. The grant’s second project, led by Dorr, will test Imexon in a clinical trial in combination with another drug, Gemcitabine, for effectiveness against pancreatic cancer and will develop new drugs similar to Imexon.

The grant’s third project is directed toward a new area – how the latest diagnostic radiology techniques can assist in drug development research and treatment. Led by Robert J. Gillies, director of the Arizona Cancer Center’s Imaging Program, this project will study the use of imaging to identify patients most likely to respond to treatment with the new anticancer agents. Another goal is to develop new contrast agents to make imaging research techniques more effective.

Terry Landowski, research assistant professor for the Arizona Cancer Center, heads the newly added Biomarkers Core Service, which is another notable addition since the last grant. This service will help develop biomarkers of drugs’ effects on cells, which eventually will be incorporated into clinical trials of those drugs.

The clinical trials of PX-12 and other new agents will be managed by Tomislav Dragovich, assistant professor of medicine and a specialist in gastrointestinal cancers, and Francisco Esteva of MD Anderson Cancer Center.

The Arizona Cancer Center is the state’s premier National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center. With primary locations at the UA in Tucson and in Scottsdale, the center has more than a dozen research and education offices throughout the state and 300 physician and scientist members working to prevent and cure cancer.