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The goal of Ordway Cancer Center is to develop innovative strategies for designing individualized cancer therapy, based on newly discovered concepts in cancer biology, novel diagnostic approaches and identification of novel targets for anticancer drugs.
Some of the strategies pursued by Cancer Center researchers include:
- Identification of the key determinants of tumor cell growth and survival using tools of function-based genomics, such as Genetic Suppressor Elements (GSE) and RNAi expression libraries
- Identification of gene signatures determining tumor progression and survival, based on microarray analysis of gene expression in clinical cancers
- Approaches to the identification and eradication of cancer stem cells
- Interfering with the tumor-supporting functions of normal stromal cells that are recruited into the tumor, including cancer-associated fibroblasts and endothelial cells
- Reactivation of the physiological program of senescence in tumor cells and inhibition of the deleterious side effects of senescence in normal cells
- Exploiting cell cycle checkpoint deficiencies of tumor cells to induce tumor-specific lethal mitosis (mitotic catastrophe)
- Developing new therapeutic approaches based on the tissue origin of specific cancers (e.g. prostate cancer)
- Designing novel regimens of existing anticancer drugs to improve their tumor selectivity
- Discovering small-molecule inhibitors of the essential molecular targets and pathways of individual cancers
In pursuit of these strategies, members of the Cancer Center study the origin and properties of cancer stem cells; the molecular basis of advanced prostate cancer; mechanisms of senescence, apoptosis and mitotic catastrophe in tumor cells, mechanisms of action and resistance to anticancer drugs, and mechanisms of DNA repair and genomic instability.
Ordway Cancer Center serves as the base for the Target and Drug Discovery Facility, which provides assistance in function-based genomics and offers high-throughput screening capacity for the discovery of small molecule compounds with any desired properties. The Cancer Center also houses Ordway Flow Cytometry Core that operates top-of-the-line analytical and preparative fluorescence-activated cell sorters. It also operates the deconvolution microscopy and laser-capture microdissection instruments of Ordway Microscopy Core and several other essential instruments for cell and tumor biology. Ordway Cancer Center also houses the editorial office of the journal Cell Cycle.
Ordway Cancer Center is interacting and collaborating with researchers at:
- Wadsworth Center
- Albany College of Medicine
- Albany College of Pharmacy
- SUNY Albany
- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
- Beth Israel-Deaconess Hospital (Boston, MA).
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