The Keystone Programs for Collaborative Discovery
FAQs
Q: What are the Keystone Programs for Collaborative Discovery?
A: The Keystone Programs for Collaborative Discovery are a suite of innovative team-based cancer research initiatives launched by Fox Chase Cancer Center in February 2008. At the heart of each Keystone Program is a self-organized group of scientists, clinicians, and other research professionals seeking to integrate and focus their joined expertise on a significant question in cancer. The expectation is that this team-based, thematic research approach will accelerate the pace of medical progress against cancer. The first four Keystone Programs are:
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The Keystone Program in Personalized Risk and Prevention
- Goal: To discover molecular markers that predict cancer risk and to develop risk reduction strategies tailored to the profile and personal values of the individual
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The Keystone Program in Epigenetics and Progenitor Cells
- Goal: To investigate two new views of the origins and maintenance of tumor cells with the aim of creating novel approaches to diagnosis, treatment, and prevention
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The Keystone Program in Blood Cell Development and Cancer
- Goal: To identify the genes essential for blood precursor cells to give rise to the many distinct blood cell types, a critical step towards understanding blood cell cancers and improving the treatment of patients with leukemias and lymphomas
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The Keystone Program in Personalized Kidney Cancer Therapy
- Goal: To investigate the mechanisms of kidney cancer metastasis and to uncover the molecular signals that anticipate how a kidney tumor will respond to therapies in order to optimize therapy for individual patients
Q: How will these four programs by funded?
A: Each of the new Keystones will receive at least $5 million in support over five years. The funding will come primarily from new sources, including Fox Chase’s Board of Directors and private philanthropy.
Q: Why were the Keystone Programs created?
A: With the rise of molecular biology at the end of the last century, medical scientists gained extraordinarily detailed insights into human biology, progressively unlocking the secrets of genes and the molecular pathways they control, both in health and in disease. Today, powerful new data-gathering and computational technologies offer researchers unparalleled opportunities to bring the power of molecular biology to bear on understanding and treating complex diseases such as cancer. Cancer researchers are now able to study the disease at every level of biological organization simultaneously, systematically assessing cancer at the levels of genes and molecules, cells, tissues, organisms, and even entire populations.
The Keystone Programs represent an unprecedented reimagining of Fox Chase’s research enterprise to seize the opportunities for progress against cancer unique to this moment in scientific history. Pivotal to the success of this emerging strategy is the concept of team-based science, in which investigators across the spectrum of medical science disciplines join forces to attack a single important problem in cancer. In the post-genomic era, the next wave of biomedical scientific progress will depend on such self-assembled teams of researchers from different fields effectively pooling their skills and resources to address important questions in human biology and disease.
Q: Are the Keystone Programs unique to Fox Chase Cancer Center?
A: In recent years, federal agencies funding biomedical research have recognized the importance of multidisciplinary team-based strategies for solving important disease problems. Funding mechanisms intended to support this kind of research include the Program Project Grants (P01) sponsored by a number of the National Institutes of Health and the Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE) supported by the National Cancer Institute, one of the NIH institutes.
In launching the Keystone Programs, Fox Chase Cancer Center is making a remarkable institutional commitment to promoting team-based research to accelerate discovery in cancer medicine. The scope of the organization’s investment in this program is unusual and may well be unique among academic research centers.
Q: Why does Fox Chase Cancer Center expect to succeed with the Keystone Programs?
A: In confronting cancer, Fox Chase Cancer Center has two advantages over most other leading medical centers, both of which will contribute to the success of the Keystone Programs. The first is its tight focus on only one major health problem. Unlike most medical centers, Fox Chase is dedicated solely to reducing the burden of human cancer. A second pronounced advantage is Fox Chase’s intimate organizational culture, which encourages the kind of collaborative interactions among scientists and physicians that will drive the success of the Keystone Programs.
Q: How were these four programs selected for funding?
A: Twelve proposals for Keystone Program funding were submitted for consideration by teams of Fox Chase researchers. At the invitation of Fox Chase’s president and CEO Michael V. Seiden, M.D., Ph.D., an external scientific advisory panel of sixteen leading cancer scientists and clinicians agreed to review the proposals in detail to assess their scientific strengths. The panel also traveled to Fox Chase to listen to presentations by the proposal teams. The counsel provided by this independent group of advisors served to ensure the fairness of the award process, as well as the high quality of the winning programs.
Q: Individual investigators have been the backbone of a vibrant, productive scientific program at Fox Chase for many years. Do the Keystone Programs represent a turning away from the importance of individual-investigator contributions?
A: The Keystone Programs are an effort to balance the existing individual-investigator strengths of the scientific enterprise at Fox Chase with team-based thematic approaches to solving some of the most significant problems in cancer. Increasingly, meaningful progress against cancer and other complex biomedical problems will depend on the collaborative efforts of teams of investigators working across the spectrum of scientific and medical disciplines. The Keystone Programs were created to take advantage of opportunities for progress that can only be realized through this new approach. The creativity and drive of individual investigators will continue to be vital to the scientific culture at Fox Chase. In fact, a parallel series of internally funded pilot programs for individual investigators is currently under review, with announcements expected soon.
About Fox Chase Cancer Center:
Fox Chase Cancer Center is one of the leading freestanding cancer research and treatments centers in the United States. Founded in 1904 in Philadelphia as the nation’s first cancer hospital, Fox Chase became one of the first institutions to be designated a National Cancer Institute Comprehensive Cancer Center in 1974. Today, Fox Chase conducts a broad array of nationally competitive basic, translational, and clinical research, with special programs in cancer prevention, detection, treatment, and community outreach. Fox Chase has long fostered a team-based approach to the treatment of cancer patients, with coordinated teams of physicians, nurses, and other health-care professionals providing individual patients with the most appropriate and most effective care for their cancer. For more information, visit Fox Chase’s web site at www.fccc.edu or call 1-888-FOX-CHASE or 1-888-369-2427.