Sylvester Researchers Awarded Five-Year Grant to Study Cancer Viruses

March 09, 2010 — Viruses are believed to be the cause of as many as 20 percent of all cancers, but some viruses can infect human cells and remain latent. To remain latent, they may have to suppress anti-viral host mechanisms, which can pave the way for cancer. The laboratory of Glen N. Barber, Ph.D., the Eugenia J. Dodson Chair in Cancer Research and leader of the Viral Oncology Program at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, has played a key role in unraveling these host mechanisms, referred to as innate immunity. Barber is now leading a team of physicians and scientists at Sylvester who have been awarded a prestigious five-year PO1 grant from the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, to uncover these mechanisms and study them in clinical trials. This $8 million grant from the NCI involves multiple investigators. Barber and two other Sylvester researchers will take a three-pronged approach to studying these viral malignancies. "This is a basic research grant with a clinical component," explains Barber.