Edward B. Brown; University of Rochester; Era of Hope Scholar Award:

I received a Department of Defense BCRP Era of Hope Scholar Award covering research in angiogenesis and how the growth of new blood vessels is dictated by signaling within endothelial cells in individual tumors. We work on instrumentation development combined with application of some of our new technologies to answer important questions in breast cancer biology. So one of the techniques we developed in the past was a way to study the permeability or leakiness of individual tumor vessels inside of a living tumor in animal models and we are now using that technique and other related microscopy techniques to understand how blood vessels inside living tumors signal and figure out how to grow into a tumor. And by studying how this process happens inside endothelial cells we can try to find therapeutic drug targets that can block multiple ways of causing an endothelial cell to help create a new blood vessel instead of blocking individual ways and then having the tumor figure out how to get around your blockade. So I think this particular project is a perfect example of the support BCRP gives to interdisciplinary work, this is heavily grounded in optics and physics and heavily grounded in tumor biology, tumor pathophysiology, and makes no sense in only one of the two disciplines. Divided into its component parts, it's messing around with microscopes or trying to study a tumor process that you can't study without new technology. So you have to develop the technology and understand it in order to use it to answer questions that could not be asked without the technology, and the BCRP is funding both the development and its application.

This was probably the most educational meeting for me. I just over the past few weeks have been thinking of a new project that's slightly outside of my area of expertise in breast cancer and I have been able to sit and listen to all the experts and talk amongst themselves. I've discarded a couple ideas for models and preparations and gained a couple ideas for models and preparations. I have been able to run my ideas by some of the world's experts on particular processes in breast tumor biology. There's a very strong collegiality feeling here because everybody is working on the same project, and you have the consumer reviews there reminding you that you are not supposed to be hiding what you're doing to get the next publication. You're supposed to be sharing what you're doing to help other people as well, and I was able to use the sort of spirit of sharing to get ideas, to discard some of my bad ideas, and work and decide to follow some of the good ideas by talking to experts in the field.

In the future I'll be developing more technologies, more microscopy-based techniques, that will allow us to understand processes in tumor biology. This particular application of some of our technology will lead us to better understanding of tumor angiogenesis so we can stop it. And this particular project which is a spin off of that work will allow us to understand how the tumor extracellular matrix affects tumor metastasis, and by knowing how it works, we can try to stop it and inhibit or prevent tumor metastasis.