Fall 2003 Newsletter: 2002 Cancer Research Foundation Fletcher Scholar:

Factors Regulating Metastatic Growth

Carrie Rinker-Schaeffer, Ph.D. Associate Professor Department of Surgery University of Chicago Medical Center

In 1988, the Cancer Research Foundation received $710,265. from the estate of Eugene and Dorothy S. Fletcher. Under the terms of their trust, this money was “to be held as a permanent fund to be known as the Eugene and Dorothy Fletcher Memorial Endowment with income only to be used for laboratory research.”

This generous gift was used to establish the Cancer Research Foundation Fletcher Scholars Program, a biennial award of $100,000, to an individual senior cancer scientist doing laboratory research of exceptional import. Dr. Rinker- Schaeffer is our 8th Fletcher Scholar.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer detected in American men. If prostate cancer is diagnosed when confined to the prostate, it can be cured by surgically removing it. A great challenge lies in treating prostate cancer after it has spread outside of the prostate.

When Dr. Rinker-Schaeffer was a Cancer Research Foundation Young Investigator in 1995, her goal was to identify genes that could block the ability of the cancer cells in the prostate to become metastatic (to escape and carry cancer to other sites in the body), and to identify tumors of high and low metastatic potential.

There is a long-standing belief that once cancer cells spread from the primary tumor, anti- metastatic therapies would be ineffective. The most important clinical need in prostate cancer is to be able to prevent and/or treat bone metastases (the most frequent site of metastases in prostate cancer). Little is known of the underlying mechanisms responsible for bone metastases. Defining the genes and cellular pathways regulating metastatic growth is the first step toward this therapeutic goal.