A new partnership between Clark Atlanta University and Georgia Tech will explore ways to use DNA sequencing to analyze the genetic makeup of cancer patients and develop customized care.

The Collaborative Cancer Genomics Cancer at CAU will focus on lung, ovarian, prostate and pancreatic cancers. Prostate cancer was targeted because CAU already has an established center devoted to research of that disease, which is disproportionately high among African-Americans. Georgia Tech is working on ovarian cancer research and recently established a project with St. Joseph’s Hospital to study pancreatic and lung cancers.

"One of our major goals is to begin to look at cancer patients as individuals," said Dr. John McDonald, director of Georgia Tech’s Integrative Cancer Research Center and chief research scientist for the Ovarian Cancer Institute. A treatment option for one patient with ovarian cancer, for instance, may not necessarily work for all patients with that same cancer. He said mutations in the molecular makeup of an individual cancer could have a significant impact on the effectiveness of certain drugs.

"The tendency is to focus on what is common among cancer patients, but differences are equally important," McDonald said. "We're looking at the other side of the coin - what is unique about this individual cancer and how might it translate into personalized therapy."

The Translational Research Institute at St. Joseph’s, the Ovarian Cancer Institute and the Georgia Research Alliance are helping to support the project.

Once tissue samples are received, researchers at CAU and Georgia Tech will use DNA sequencing to study the structure and function of genes.

Dr. Shafiq Khan, a professor of biology and a Georgia Research Alliance eminent scholar at CAU, said the collaboration uses the expertise of each partner.

"What you don’t have at the moment is the way to treat a patient based on what causes cancer in that particular patient," Khan said. "Every patient has a very special signature."

By Shelia M. Poole
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution