Advocacy for Federal Funding Initiatives for Kidney Cancer Research
The Federal government funds kidney cancer research primarily through two mechanisms, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the Department of Defense’s Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP).
National Cancer Institute Funding
Every year, the NCI funds research on several cancer types including kidney cancer. For FY2017, the NCI provided $45,596,811 for 209 grants, any part of which could be attributed to kidney cancer research. Following is a list of a selection of over 100 of the 209 total grants for which a substantial amount is dedicated to kidney cancer research. While many of the grants are targeted specifically to kidney cancer researchers, there are other grants that could have applicability to several cancers. The investigator fills out a form and makes their best guess as to the percent of relevance of the grant to kidney cancer. For example, some grants could specify 1% to kidney cancer. For the most part, we only included grants in our list those grants that amounted close to or over $100,000 to kidney cancer research.
Department of Defense Funding
As a result of ACKC’s lobbying efforts, the DoD CDMRP (Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs) has been funding kidney cancer research since FY2006, starting with the Peer Reviewed Medical Research Programs then following via the Peer Reviewed Cancer Research Programs, and, for FY2017, CDMRP’s Kidney Cancer Research Programs (KCRP).
These program awardees are documented elsewhere on this website: http://www.ackc.org/federal-appropriation and http://www.ackc.org/fy2017-10-million-kcrp-program-awardees.
NCI and DoD Funding Summary 2017
View a comprehensive PDF spreadsheet of NCI and DoD KDMRP Funded Research Fiscal Year 2017.
Specialized Programs of Research Excellence
In 1992, the National Cancer Institute established the Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE) as part of its Translational Research Program located in Bethesda, MD. The objective of the program is to develop “diverse approaches to the prevention, early detection, diagnosis and treatment of human cancers” that ultimately lead to the saving of lives.
The SPORE team, which often entails more than one institution, consists of both basic and clinical, interdisciplinary researchers who are encouraged to collaborate with their peers. The hope is to both determine the biological basis of their findings and advance their work to clinical settings. Thinking long term, the NCI funds SPOREs, which usually concentrate on a single organ site, for a five-year period. Unlike for most cancer research projects, SPOREs encourage involvement of patient advocates.
Until 2016, there was only one kidney cancer SPORE, located at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in partnership with the Dana Farber/Harvard Cancer Center. An application for a new kidney cancer SPORE was made by the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. ACKC supported their application and convinced the local political representatives, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson from Dallas and Texas Sen. John Cornyn to send letters in support of the UTSW application. As it happened, the UTSW application scored very high and was accepted into the SPORE program. ACKC has since supported UTSW with two grants to promising young researchers studying cachexia and anti-PD-1 drug resistance.
The Boston SPORE program has contributed enormously to the study and treatment of kidney cancer for over a decade. The program, which has been in existence since 2003 (with a break in funding in 2014), has made significant progress in the basic and translational science of kidney cancer, which has resulted in clinical progress against the disease.
Some of their achievements are the following.
SPORE Results
- SPORE researchers identified c-Met as a potential mechanism by which kidney cancers acquire resistance to VEGF inhibitors. This breakthrough led researchers to study several Met inhibitors, and to their eventual focus on the drug that became cabozantinib. Critically, the work of the kidney cancer SPORE program led to a Phase I trial which showed activity in kidney cancer patients. As such, this work provided important proof-of-concept data to convince the developer (Exelixis) and kidney cancer clinicians to initiate a Phase III trial (METEOR), which very recently demonstrated that cabozantinib nearly doubled progression-free survival compared with standard everolimus therapy in patients with metastatic kidney cancer.
- The SPORE group identified PD-1 as an early target for kidney cancer immunotherapy, developing antibody-based approaches to inhibit it long before PD-1 became a hot target in oncology. While the clinical successes for kidney cancer in this area have been accomplished in conjunction with industry, the SPORE group helped to establish a focus for development of anti-PD-1 immunotherapy in kidney cancer, which might otherwise not have happened. Ultimately, these efforts have led to multiple clinical trials of checkpoint inhibitors in kidney cancer, either as monotherapy, in combination with VEGF inhibitors, or through dual checkpoint inhibition.
- SPORE researchers identified HIF-2 alpha as a major oncogenic driver in VHL null kidney cancer. Despite its important role in this disease, as a transcription factor HIF2-alpha has long been considered ‘undruggable’ by the pharmaceutical industry. Hence, the SPORE group focused on identifying and characterizing small molecule inhibitors of HIF-2 alpha. Promisingly, in collaboration with Peloton Therapeutics, Inc., the researchers are now testing a potent HIF2-alpha inhibitor (PT2385) – the only such drug available for clinical testing at this time. The potent anti-tumor effects of this compound in pre-clinical studies provides hope that the findings of the kidney cancer SPORE can ultimately be translated into HIF2-alpha inhibitors for testing in clinical trials for kidney cancer patients. Again, this is another clear case in which the kidney cancer SPORE has fostered interest from industry in developing drugs and clinical trials for this disease.
SPORE Benefits
One of the major side benefits of the kidney cancer SPORE has been to introduce young investigators to the field and keep them working in kidney cancer as they move on to other institutions. For example, Dr. Eric Jonasch, who was a young investigator working at the Boston SPORE, now directs the kidney cancer program at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Daniel George, who also did his early work on kidney cancer at the Boston SPORE, is now the director of the genitourinary program at Duke University. Despite these successful examples, it is an unfortunate reality that many promising up-and-coming researchers leave kidney cancer research to pursue other avenues of research where both government and private foundation funding is more plentiful.
Toward a Third Kidney Cancer SPORE
ACKC encourages major cancer research centers to collaborate locally and apply for a third Kidney Cancer SPORE, which would energize both young investigators and experienced researchers to stay in the field and create the opportunities for productive collaboration among researchers in three kidney cancer SPOREs, leading to breakthrough achievements in the treatment of kidney cancer.
Currently Funded SPOREs
Specialized Programs of Research Excellence: NCI Funded
Below are NCI-funded SPOREs for Fiscal Year 2017.
| Organ Site | Institution | Amount Funded | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brain | Total | $11,352,070 | |
| Duke University | 2,298,025 | ||
| Massachusetts General Hospital | 2,280,112 | ||
| University of California Los Angeles | 2,185,000 | ||
| University of California, San Francisco | 2,300,000 | ||
| University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center | 2,288,933 | ||
| Breast | Total | $9,090,499 | |
| Baylor College of Medicine | 2,300,000 | ||
| Dana-Farber Cancer Institute | 2,051,965 | ||
| Mayo Clinic Rochester | 2,438,534 | ||
| Vanderbilt University Medical Center | 2,300,000 | ||
| Cervical | Total | $2,300,000 | |
| Johns Hopkins University | 2,300,000 | ||
| Endometrial | Total | $2,491,997 | |
| University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center | 2,491,997 | ||
| Gastrointentinal | Total | $5,377,267 | |
| Case Western Reserve University | 2,375,000 | ||
| Dana-Farber Cancer Institute | 2,293,187 | ||
| Vanderbilt University Medical Center | 709,080 | ||
| Head & Neck | Total | $1,943,901 | |
| University of Pittsburgh | $1,943,901 | ||
| Kidney | Total | $4,600,000 | |
| Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center | 2,300,000 | ||
| University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center | 2,300,000 | ||
| Leukemia | Total | $6,916,282 | |
| Brigham and Women’s Hospital | 2,185,000 | ||
| University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center | 2,300,000 | ||
| Washington University | 2,431,282 | ||
| Lung | Total | $7,168,935 | |
| University of Colorado Denver | 2,361,337 | ||
| University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center | 2,299,998 | ||
| Yale University | 2,507,600 | ||
| Lymphoma | Total | $7,724,234 | |
| Baylor College of Medicine | 3,097,657 | ||
| Sloan-Kettering Institute of Cancer Research | 2,251,577 | ||
| University of Iowa | 2,375,000 | ||
| Myeloma | Total | $4,600,000 | |
| Dana-Farber Cancer Institute | 2,300,000 | ||
| Mayo Clinic Arizona | 2,300,000 | ||
| Neuroendocrine | Total | $2,600,000 | |
| Beckman Research Institute/City of Hope | 300,000 | ||
| University of Iowa | 2,300,000 | ||
| Ovarian | Total | $6,387,813 | |
| Mayo Clinic Rochester | 2,300,000 | ||
| Roswell Park Cancer Institute Corp | 2,354,957 | ||
| University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center | 1,732,856 | ||
| Pancreatic | Total | $6,822,460 | |
| Mayo Clinic Rochester | 2,300,000 | ||
| University of Nebraska Medical Center | 2,379,383 | ||
| Washington University | 2,143,077 | ||
| Prostate | Total | $20,207,916 | |
| Dana-Farber Cancer Institute | 2,300,000 | ||
| Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center | 2,220,357 | ||
| Johns Hopkins University | 1,993,426 | ||
| Northwestern University | 2,293,078 | ||
| Sloan-Kettering Institute of Cancer Research | 2,436,043 | ||
| University of California Los Angeles | 2,300,000 | ||
| University of Michigan | 2,380,000 | ||
| University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center | 2,100,013 | ||
| Weill Medical College of Cornell University | 2,184,999 | ||
| Skin | Total | $7,173,141 | |
| H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute | 1,789,062 | ||
| University of Pittsburgh | 2,350,000 | ||
| Wistar Institute | 2,300,000 | ||
| Yale University | 734,079 | ||
| Thyroid | Total | $4,414,985 | |
| Ohio State University | 2,278,318 | ||
| Sloan-Kettering Institute of Cancer Research | 2,136,667 | ||
| Total NCI-Funded SPOREs | $111,171,500 |
Specialized Programs of Research Excellence: Multiple Funded
Below are multiple-funded SPOREs for Fiscal Year 2017.
| Organ Site | Institution | Amount Funded | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hyperactive RAS | Total | $2,271,783 | |
| Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis | 2,271,783 | ||
| Head and Neck | Total | $216,200 | |
| University of Wisconsin-Madison | 216,200 | ||
| Total Multiple-Funded SPOREs | $2,487,983 | ||
| TOTAL SPOREs FUNDED | $113,659,483 |
NCI-funded and multiple-funded SPOREs together totaled more than $113M of funding for kidney cancer research in Fiscal Year 2017.
