The ÐÜèAVÃâ·Ñ and Tampa General Hospital (TGH) Cancer Institute expect to be better equipped to study and treat cancer thanks to $6 million divided among three awards from the Florida Department of Health. Some of the money will help consolidate oncology efforts onto a single, more effective platform.
Rays Jiang, PhD (Photo by USF Health)
“I was very excited, and a bit surprised,’’ Dr. , associate professor in the at the (COPH), said of her highly competitive award. “My first thought was: now we can actually build the system, not just talk about it for years. We can connect the operating room, lab and clinic − all centered around an individual patient.’’
Each of the three USF–TGH collaborative cancer research projects received $2 million, representing $6 million in state investment in public health. The collaborations are also connected to USF’s CREATE Precision Medicine Program − with Jiang serving as principal investigator − which has helped build the cross-institutional network and support pilot studies.
“The technologies we use are absolutely cutting edge,’’ Jiang said. “But the real innovation is connecting them into one working system: patient to surgery, tumor to functional testing and molecular analysis, and eventually information back toward the clinic. Cancer is a systems problem, so the solution needs a higher-level view.’’
David J. Voce, MD (Photo by USF Health)
Jiang is principal investigator on a USF-TGH project called “Live Brain Tumor Testing: Metabolic Drug Repurposing with Mechanistic Precision,’’ which focuses on glioblastoma, a deadly brain cancer. Even with surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, most patients survive only about a year. A challenge is there is no fast and reliable way to test which treatments will work for each person’s tumor. As a result, patients often receive medicines that may not help, while valuable time is lost. , a neurosurgeon at TGH, serves as the project’s co-investigator.
The glioblastoma project brings a new, practical solution to Florida: testing each patient’s own tumor cells immediately after surgery to see which existing, safe medicines − including affordable, FDA-approved drugs − kill their cancer most effectively.
“The simplest way to say it is that we want the patient’s own tumor to tell us what drugs work,’’ Jiang said. “Instead of only predicting response, we test drugs directly on living tumor cells, then study why they respond or resist. The key is to bring those different views together around the same patient and the same tumor.’’
Doctors will watch how cancer cells behave in real time and measure their response to treatment and stress within seven-to-10 days. The goal is to move beyond one-size-fits-all treatment for one of the most aggressive forms of brain cancer.
“By creating this rapid ‘from patient to lab and back’ system, we aim to give Florida patients access to personalized treatment information that doesn’t exist today,’’ Jiang said. “This program also will help make precision cancer care more accessible, affordable, and effective for patients across the state.’’
Timothy Yeatman, MD, PhD (Photo by USF Health)
Another $2 million project, led by , associate director of Translational Research at TGH with Jiang as co-investigator, will map the tumor micro-environment by combining spatial analysis of lipids, gene activity and microbes at the single-cell level. The goal is to better understand how these factors interact inside tumors and identify new weaknesses that could be targeted with treatment.
A separate $2 million project, led by , a surgical oncologist at TGH with Yeatman and Jiang as co-investigators, will examine whether dietary fats can reshape gut bacteria, their metabolites and tumor signaling in ways that make the liver less favorable for colorectal cancer metastasis.
Together, the three projects take different approaches to the same challenge: finding more precise ways to understand cancer, predict its behavior and identify treatments that may work better for individual patients.
Richard Jacobson, MD (Photo by USF Health)
The COPH-TGH collaboration on cancer research and treatment is a best-in-class partnership that spans discovery science, clinical care and population health, said , dean of COPH and director of the Cancer Control Prevention and Epidemiology Program at TGH.
“This collaboration enables researchers and clinicians to work seamlessly across disciplines, accelerating the development of new cancer therapies while ensuring that scientific advances ultimately reach the patients and communities who need them most,’’ he said. “The state’s investment in cancer research will help drive innovation, attract talent, and improve both the quality and accessibility of cancer care for Floridians.’’