Moffitt Cancer Center teams up with MD Anderson to discover, test novel agents to prevent cancer

Moffitt Cancer Center has joined MD Anderson's National Cancer Institute (NCI) Phase 0/I/II Cancer Prevention Clinical Chemoprevention Trials Consortia. Sponsored by the NCI's Division of Cancer Prevention, the consortia conducts early clinical development of promising new preventive agents through its Phase 0/I/II Cancer Prevention Clinical Trials Program.

As part of the drug discovery process, researchers will look at a number of new agents that intervene in specific molecular pathways thought to be critical to cancer development. Since cancer prevention studies focus on high-risk populations that do not necessarily harbor a detectable cancer, these studies require extensive biomarker analysis, investigation of the biologic effects of the cancer preventive agents on their intended molecular targets and correlation with clinically relevant endpoints.

"Our Moffitt team has developed several agents using this systematic approach for the past few years. This is a great opportunity for our faculty to work with some of the premier clinical chemoprevention scientists from around the world to accelerate agent development for cancer prevention," notes Nagi B. Kumar, Ph.D., R.D., F.A.D.A., consortium principal investigator and director of Cancer Chemoprevention.

Provided by H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute