California Breast Cancer Research Program Awards $7.1 million for 37 New Research Grants

Laurence Fitzgerald, Ph.D., CBCRP Manager–Core Funding

The CBCRP is pleased to announce the funding of 37 new grants for 2007. Over 7 million dollars will go to public and private California institutions and community organizations to advance breast cancer research in a variety of topics. Later this summer we will issue a more detailed report on funding for this year in our publication: 2007 CBCRP Cycle 13 Awards Compendium. The abstracts for all of our 37 newly funded grants as well as the more than 700 previous CBCRP awards will be posted on our website (www.CaBreastCancer.org) under the link “Research Portfolio.”

Grant Funding Process
We received 218 applications for our January and February submission deadlines, and two conference award applications were submitted separately. The innovative award type (IDEA) was the most numerous (103), followed by postdoctoral fellowship (48), community collaboration (27), dissertation (22), translational (10), IDEA-renewal (8), and conference award (2) applications. In terms of research topics, over 80 percent of our portfolio are in the basic science-totranslational areas, especially our “Biology of the Breast Cell” and “Detection, Prognosis, and Treatment” areas. We assigned scientific merit scores in five peer review committees that met in San Francisco during March- April. Each application was reviewed by three scientific and one advocate reviewer. Applications in the upper 2/3 of scientific merit were scored for program responsiveness across a seven item rating system by our 15-member advisory council. Sadly, we received far more outstanding applications than we could support with our limited funds for 2007. The net result was that we were only able to offer 39 awards to our PIs—subsequently two of them were either declined or had research overlap. Thus, the overall success rate (37/220) was only 17%. The funding rate for award types was varied. The IDEA-renewals were funded at a level of (38%), followed by dissertation awards (36%), community collaboration research projects (22%), postdoctoral fellowships (17%), translational research (10%), and IDEAs (9%). Both of our applications for conference awards were funded.

2007 Special Recognition Grants
CBCRP’s 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. The recipients of the 2007 Faith Fancher Research Award are Kimlin Ashing-Giwa, Ph.D. at the City of Hope National Medical Center (Duarte) and Gloria Harmon from the community group Women of Essence (Lynwood) for their project, Sister Survivor: African American Breast Cancer Coalition. Although African American breast cancer survivors bear some of the heaviest burden among all medically underserved breast cancer survivors, few investigations and interventions have focused on addressing their psychosocial needs. This collaboration will address the following questions: (1) what are the benefits, unmet needs, and psychological issues of participants from African American breast cancer support groups, especially in the Inland Empire region? and (2) what are the elements of structure and process, and the most culturally-appropriate paradigm for developing a peer-led African American support group?

The CBCRP gives thanks to the tens of thousands of Californians who donated to us though our voluntary state income tax check-off campaign. Seven grants in 2007 were selected to be supported by these funds:

Multinuclear MRI of Breast Tumors
Brian Hargreaves, Ph.D.
Stanford University
IDEA

Molecular Imaging of Metastatic Lymph Nodes in Breast Cancer
Ella Jones, Ph.D.
University of California, San Francisco
IDEA

Intraductal Therapy of DCIS: a Presurgery Study
Susan Love, M.D.
Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation (Pacific Palisades)
Translational Research Award

Modulation of Breast Cancer Stem Cell Response to Radiation
Frank Pajonk, M.D., Ph.D.
University of California, Los Angeles
IDEA

Breast Cancer Risks in California Nail Salon Workers
Peggy Reynolds, Ph.D. and Linda Okhara
Northern California Cancer Center (Fremont) and Asian Health Services (Oakland)
Community Research Collaboration Full Research Award

Science Literacy & Breast Cancer Clinical Trials Education
Georgia Sadler, Ph.D. and Natasha Riley, M.A.
University of California, San Diego and Vista Community Clinic
Community Research Collaboration
Pilot Award

The Relationship of BRCA1 and HMGA2 in Breast Cancer
Connie Tsai
University of California, Irvine
Dissertation Award

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. Special thanks go to our peer review committees and advisory council for their work in selecting these grants.