Genomics Progress Expands Via Regional Collaborations

Professor Paulette McCormick, center, director of UAlbany's CCFG, is flanked by Paula McKeown-Longo and Paul Higgins, co-directors of Albany Medical Center's Center for Cell Biology and Cancer Research. The two centers are now sharing core facilities and developing joint research programs.

At the University at Albany, projects related to cancer and metastases biology are dynamic within a Capital Region nexus dedicated to eradicating the disease in all its forms.

One study in the Center for Comparative Functional Genomics (CCFG), funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), focuses on the use of retinoids — natural and synthetic derivatives of Vitamin A — in cancer therapy. In another ongoing effort, the role of cell-surface lysosomal associated membrane protein (LAMP) in tumor progression and metastases — the latter of which causes 90 percent of deaths from solid tumors — is being investigated.

“We are theorizing that an antibody recognizing cell surface LAMP might very well block metastatic cells from spreading, thereby greatly decreasing cancer mortality,” said McCormick, director of CCFG and lead investigator on the both the retinoids and LAMP projects.

At UAlbany's Center for X-ray Optics, faculty are studying new ways of using this technology to increase the accuracy of mammography in breast cancer detection.

At the Mutant Mouse Regional Resource Center (also NIH funded), the most is being made of science's closest working model to the human being — the mouse — to explore genetic processes, particularly those that cause disease, including a variety of cancers. In one project, global gene expressions are being compared in the mouse liver versus the kidney versus the brain to see how much is tissue-specific. “Cancer of different tissues may require different treatments, and this research helps us better understand what will work,” said McCormick.

In another mouse study, UAlbany biologist Richard Cunningham observes mutations in the DNA repair pathway, how they affect development of different diseases and how they can be targeted to prevent disease.

Such efforts reflect the University's position as a significant center for life sciences research — one that has been attained in a very short time. CCFG, located on the East Campus in Rensselaer, opened in 1996. A major new facility, the University's Life Sciences Research Building, is now under construction.

Partnership with government has facilitated this growth enormously, including $5 million in funding from New York that allowed CCFG to establish state-of-the-art core research facilities. But growth would not have been possible without further significant collaborations with private sector partners and other institutions in the Capital Region. “The University at Albany and this region have a tremendous research infrastructure,” said McCormick.

In addition to the resources that the University has in place in CCFG and its other Schools and Centers, efforts are supported and complemented by initiatives at area institutions such as Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the Veterans Administration hospital, and New York's Wadsworth Center.

Private partnerships have also reaped large rewards. The Mutant Mouse Resource Center, for instance, is a joint undertaking of CCFG and Taconic Biotechnology, Inc., which has grown from an incubator firm to an anchor tenant on the East Campus. In 2002, CCFG teamed up with Myomatrix Molecular Technologies, a biopharmaceutical company, to acquire a Micromass Q-ToF2 mass spectrometer, the only one of its kind in the Capital Region and critical for the separation, identification and sequencing of proteins.

In late 2002, State Senate Majority Leader Joseph L. Bruno announced $22.5 million from the state to create a $45 million Gen*NY*sis Center for Excellence in Cancer Genomics on the East Campus, with the University and private business providing the other half of the center's cost. There, University research scientists will be joined by researchers from area medical centers and such East Campus anchor tenants as Taconic Biotechnology, Smart Gene and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc.

One expanding partnership that promises limitless potential links the University with Albany Medical College. AMC faculty from all four of its basic science centers utilize several of the core facilities that exist in CCFG, including those for molecular biology, flow cytometry, mass spectrometry, and transgenics.

“Closer programmatic alignment of the research programs in the Center for Cell Biology and Cancer Research at AMC with the newly proposed cancer genomics center at UAlbany is likely to develop rather quickly,” said Dr. Paul Higgins, the director of the AMC's cancer research center. "We have recently added a number of new faculty to our center whose research programs focus on cancer biology, thus providing an obvious programmatic link with the developing research focus at UAlbany.

“As faculty also are recruited at UAlbany's centers, collaborations will grow. While coordination of initiatives and functional maturation of these early interactions are largely the responsibility of individual faculty, all of us see significant potential benefits to our research programs and to the region’s position as a major focus for cancer research.”