University of Southern California Physical Sciences-Oncology Center
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Center Summary:
The University of Southern California Physical Sciences-Oncology Center's (USC PS-OC) overall goal is to thoroughly understand therapeutic response. Investigators will establish a predictive model of cancer that they can utilize to determine tumor steady state growth and drug response, particularly those involved in the hematological malignancies of acute myeloid leukemia and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Furthermore, multi-scale physical measurements will be unified with sophisticated modeling approaches to facilitate the development of a model that can derive the tumor’s traits during its growth and after any distress, such as chemotherapeutic treatment. These investigators will apply pioneering measurement platforms to resolve real-time protein interactions and protein abundance and to characterize protein modifications. Appropriately, these studies will also address tumor and host response to therapy using a systems approach. Overall, the predictive tumor response model should enable clinicians to determine the most efficacious therapies a priori and reduce deleterious side effects.
| Collaborators: |
Arizona State University
California Institute of Technology
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
New York University
Stanford University
University of Arizona
University of Texas Health Science Center |
projects
Core 1 - Biomaterials Dissemination
Core Leader: Mitchell Gross (University of Southern California)
The primary aim of this Core is to provide the basic biologic specimens that will inform the modeling approaches across multiple parts of this proposal. The Aims include: Standardizing sample processing and storage within this PS-OC and providing high-quality and uniform samples for coordinated analysis.
Core 2 - Data and Computational Models Dissemination
Core Leader: Carl Kesselman (University of Southern California)
The primary aim of this Core is to provide the information technology infrastructure needed to enable sharing of the heterogeneous data produced by the various research projects allowing these data to be integrated into multi-scale models. This Core will additionally coordinate model archiving and sharing.
W. Daniel Hillis, Ph.D.
W. Daniel Hillis is Research Professor of Engineering in the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC); Professor of Research Medicine in the Department of Medicine in the Keck School of Medicine of USC; and Chairman and Chief Technology Officer of Applied Minds, a research and development company creating a range of new products and services in software, entertainment, electronics, biotechnology and mechanical design. Previously, Hillis was Vice President, Research and Development at Walt Disney Imagineering, and Disney Fellow. He developed new technologies and business strategies for Disney’s theme parks, television, motion pictures, Internet and consumer products businesses. Hillis was co-founder of Thinking Machines Corp., a leading innovator in massive parallel supercomputers and RAID disk arrays. In addition to conceiving and designing the company’s major products, he worked closely with customers in applying parallel computers to problems in astrophysics, aircraft design, financial analysis, genetics, computer graphics, medical imaging, image understanding, neurobiology, materials science, cryptography and subatomic physics.Hillis is an inventor, scientist, author, and engineer. He holds over 100 U.S. patents, and is the designer of a 10,000-year mechanical clock. Hillis has published scientific papers in journals such as Science, Nature, Modern Biology, Communications of the ACM and International Journal of Theoretical Physics and is an editor of several other scientific journals, including Artificial Life, Complexity, Complex Systems, Future Generation Computer Systems and Applied Mathematics .He is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery, a Fellow of the International Leadership Forum, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
David B. Agus, M.D.
David B. Agus received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University and his M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Agus then spent two years at the NIH as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute-NIH Research Scholar and did his medical internship and residency training as part of the Osler housestaff at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Dr. Agus completed his oncology fellowship training at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center where later he served as attending physician in the Department of Medical Oncology and as head of the Laboratory of Tumor Biology. Dr. Agus received various honors and awards, including the American Cancer Society Physician Research Award, a Clinical Scholar Award from the Sloan-Kettering Institute, the International Myeloma Foundation Visionary Science Award, a CaPCURE Young Investigator Award, the American Cancer Society Oncology Fellowship Award, the HealthNetwork Foundation’s Excellence Award, and the GQ Magazine Rockstar of Science Award. He was the founder of Oncology.com, the largest cancer internet resource/community, and of Navigenics, a health care technology and wellness company. Dr. Agus had served as Research Director of the Prostate Cancer Center and Director of the Spielberg Family Center for Applied Proteomics and the Sumner Redstone Center Prostate Cancer Research Program at Cedars-Sinai and as Associate Professor of Medicine at UCLA. Dr. Agus recently moved to the University of Southern California to lead the Westside Cancer Center and the Center for Applied Molecular Medicine. Dr. Agus’ research is focused on the application of proteomics and genomics for the study of cancer and the development of new therapeutics for cancer. Dr. Agus has clinical responsibilities that include the development of clinical trials of new drugs for the treatment of cancer.
