AACR Awards Pasqualini Caring for Carcinoid Grant at Annual Meeting

An innovative approach to targeting the blood vessels that support neuroendocrine tumors of the pancreas has earned the support of a major grant in the field.

The American Association for Cancer Research will award Renata Pasqualini, Ph.D., MD Anderson's David H. Koch Center for Applied Research of Genitourinary Cancers with the 2012 Caring for Carcinoid Foundation-AACR Grant for Carcinoid Tumor and Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumor Research.

The grant will be given during a reception Tuesday, April 3 at the AACR Annual Meeting 2012 in Chicago.

Created in partnership between AACR and the Caring for Carcinoid Foundation, the two-year grant of $250,000 ($125,000 per year) supports investigators as they develop and study new ideas and innovative approaches that have direct application and relevance to carcinoid tumors or pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors. Pasqualini and collaborators Wadih Arap, M.D., Ph.D., also professor in the Koch Center, and Steven K. Libutti, M.D., professor of surgery and genetics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, work together on targeted cancer therapies and are internationally recognized experts in vascular biology, metastasis and angiogenesis.

Their research titled "Octreotide-targeted treatment of neuroendocrine tumors of the pancreas," will showcase the use of a hybrid delivery vector with genetic elements from adeno-associated virus (AAV) and a M13-derived phage called AAVP to display octreotide, which will bind to its receptors in tumor vasculature

"Establishing an octreotide-targeted AAVP for delivery of Tumor Necrosis Factor-? would provide for the systemic, targeted delivery of an apoptotic agent directly to the vulnerable vasculature of pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors with limited toxicity for normal tissues," the researchers wrote in their abstract.

Click here to read the entire AACR news release.