LOS ANGELES, July 15, 2008 – City of Hope and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have established the Caltech/City of Hope Medical Research Fund, which will support collaborative biomedical and bioengineering research programs with the goal of developing new treatments for cancer, diabetes and other life-threatening diseases. In addition, the two institutions have established the Caltech/City of Hope Endowed Funds, an endowment that will support a series of public educational forums highlighting new developments in biomedicine and therapies. The interdisciplinary research programs and educational forums, which continue a tradition of partnership between City of Hope and Caltech, are funded by a $1.5 million seed gift from an anonymous donor.
The Caltech/City of Hope Medical Research Fund, established by $1 million of the anonymous gift, will support research projects that effectively apply the strengths of both institutions through teams of investigators working to leverage groundbreaking research into developing improved treatments. Researchers from both institutions can submit proposals for funding of studies that have been jointly conceived. The institutions are working on future donations to help sustain the research fund.
“This fund will catalyze cooperative, interdisciplinary research aimed at improving treatments for patients with life-threatening diseases. I look forward to building on our history of fruitful collaboration with Caltech,” said Richard Jove, Ph.D., director of City of Hope’s Beckman Research Institute.
The Caltech/City of Hope Medical Research Fund will be administered jointly by Jove and Stephen L. Mayo, Ph.D., vice provost of research and Bren Professor of Biology and Chemistry at Caltech.
"These funds will be a great catalyst in fostering collaborative research and development programs between Caltech and City of Hope, which, in many cases, have extremely complementary activities," said Mayo.
Initially, the endowment has awarded support funds to two studies aimed at improving cancer and diabetes treatments. David Horne, Ph.D., chair, Division of Molecular Medicine, City of Hope, discovered a marine natural product that has demonstrated the ability to shrink tumors in laboratory trials. However, harvesting enough material from the ocean for testing and development is neither ecologically sustainable nor practical. In an effort to develop this promising compound into a potential new cancer therapy, Horne and Brian Stoltz, Ph.D., the Ethel Wilson Bowles and Robert Bowles Professor of Chemistry, in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Caltech, are developing a synthetic version of the compound that can be produced in large quantity.
One of the most promising investigational treatments for type 1 diabetes is islet cell transplantation to replace the damaged insulin-making cells in a patient with healthy ones. A difficulty of the procedure is that, currently, it is not possible to track the transplanted islet cells and image them to assess how many cells successfully take hold and function normally. Fouad R. Kandeel, M.D., Ph.D., director of City of Hope’s Department of Diabetes, Endocrinology & Metabolism, and Scott Fraser, Ph.D., the Anna L. Rosen Professor of Biology and director of Caltech’s Magnetic Resonance Imaging Center, are developing a technology to accomplish that task non-invasively to help improve islet cell transplantation.
"This gift, which evolved over many hours of conversation at Caltech, will facilitate innovative collaborations between research and clinical scientists at Caltech and City of Hope," said Jean-Lou Chameau, Ph.D., president of Caltech. “Bioengineers and clinical researchers will work closely together to fast-track new, groundbreaking technologies and therapies that can help in the battle against cancer and other life-threatening illnesses. This generous gift will also help these teams disseminate their breakthroughs to the general public."
The remaining $500,000 of the gift will establish the Caltech/City of Hope Endowed Funds at Caltech and City of Hope. Proceeds from the endowment will be used for networking events to foster further interaction between Caltech and City of Hope faculty and help identify potential areas of collaboration. The fund will also support educational forums for the community to help educate the general public on the advanced scientific research being conducted on both campuses. It is anticipated that both the endowed and medical research funds will increase over time with gifts from other generous donors to further enhance collaborative research partnerships between Caltech and City of Hope.
“Today more than ever, collaboration is vital to accelerating the pace of scientific discovery and translating knowledge into applications that save lives,” said Michael A. Friedman, M.D., City of Hope’s president and chief executive officer. “These grants allow Caltech and City of Hope to share our knowledge with the community and, hopefully, inspire more people to study science and further our collective efforts.”
About Caltech
With an outstanding faculty, including five Nobel laureates, and such off-campus facilities as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Palomar Observatory and the W.M. Keck Observatory, the California Institute of Technology is one of the world's major research centers. Caltech offers instruction in science and engineering for a student body of approximately 900 undergraduates and 1,300 graduate students who maintain a high level of scholarship and intellectual achievement. Caltech is a private university in Pasadena, Calif.