California Breast Cancer Research Program Awards $8 million for 52 New Research Grants

Laurence Fitzgerald, Ph.D., CBCRP Manager–Core Funding
The CBCRP announces the funding of 52 new research grants for 2005. Eight million dollars will go to 21 institutions and community organizations throughout California. Although we simplified our priority issues and reduced the types of awards offered for funding, we were able to support critical areas of breast cancer research at a reasonable success rate commensurate to years past.

The 2005 CBCRP grants cover a wide range of research topics. Twenty-four basic science projects will study either tumor biology or aspects of normal breast biology that lead to cancer; nine projects will pursue etiology (causes) and prevention strategies; nine projects will study new detection and treatment options; and ten projects will focus on the impact of breast cancer on communities and individuals.

We funded five award types this year. We awarded 19 dissertations and postdoctoral fellowships, which represents a success rate of nearly 27 percent for investigators in training. We also funded 23 innovative (IDEA) grants for a success rate of 22 percent. This year we opened the IDEA grants to “junior investigators,” researchers who had completed their fellowship work but had spent less than three years as an independent investigator, and we awarded six, representing a success rate equal to that of established investigators. Our community research collaboration awards were very successful, with seven new awards for a success rate of 35 percent. Finally, we launched a new award this year, the IDEA-competitive renewal. In this award, researchers who were previously awarded IDEA grants could apply for additional funds to carry out promising extensions of their original idea. We funded two IDEA-competitive renewals for a 50 percent success rate.

A full report on funding for this year will be published in our 2005 CBCRP Cycle 11 Awards Compendium to be released in August.

Special Recognition

The Faith Fancher Research Award is named in memory of a long-time television news anchor and personality with KTVU (Oakland) who waged a very public battle against breast cancer. Faith also was the founding member of the CBCRP Executive Team, which helps expand our Program’s community presence outside the scope of our funded researchers. Faith passed away in October 2003 after a six-year struggle with breast cancer. Beverly Burns, M.S., at the Charlotte Maxwell Complementary Clinic in Oakland and Shelley Adler, Ph.D., from the University of California, San Francisco, received this award for their project, Underserved Women with Breast Cancer at End of Life. The goals of this grant are to (1) to examine the beliefs, values, concerns, expectations, and goals regarding end-of-life among underserved, minority metastatic breast cancer patients, their physicians, their alternative medicine (CAM) practitioner, and their informal care-givers, and (2) to describe the nature of communication about end-of-life issues among these groups.

The CBCRP gives thanks to the tens of thousands of Californians who donated to us though our voluntary state income tax check-off campaign. Five grants were selected to be supported by these funds:
South Asian Women with Breast Cancer: What are Their Needs?
Roshan Bastani,Ph.D.,and Beth Glenn,Ph.D., at the University of California, Los Angeles; and Zul Surani with the South Asian Cancer Foundation

Breast Cancer Lymphedema: Role of Insulin Resistance/FOXC2
Stanley Rockson, M.D., at Stanford University

Early Breast Cancer Detection Using 3D Ultrasound Tomography
Thomas Nelson, Ph.D., at the University of California, San Diego

Inhibition of Brain Metastases in Breast Cancer
Brunhilde Felding-Habermann, Ph.D., from The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla

Breast Cancer Risk Associated with High Mammographic Density
Thea Tlsty, Ph.D., from the University of California, San Francisco

We congratulate all of our newly funded investigators and look forward to the contributions that their research will make to the fight against breast cancer.

CBCRP Funding Process

The 199 applications we received on our January and February submission deadlines were reviewed for scientific merit in five committees. Written evaluations for each application were prepared by three scientific reviewers and one advocate reviewer and scored by the entire review committee. The scientific merit scores were ranked and only the upper two-thirds of applications were eligible for funding. Next, our 16-member advisory council conducted a programmatic review of the eligible applications based on criteria that are important to the CBCRP and selected 52 applications for funding.