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Archive for the ‘Canary Center at Stanford’ Category
Canary Foundation congratulates Dr. Sanjiv Sam Gambhir on receiving the 2020 European Society of Molecular Imaging award.
July 6, 2020
From the Stanford press release:
Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, MD, PhD, the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor for Clinical Investigation in Cancer Research and Chair of the Department of Radiology, has received the 2020 European Society of Molecular Imaging (ESMI) annual award.
“The Committee recognizes Sam as one of the founding fathers of the field in which we all have the privilege to work. He has been a pioneer and visionary, a mentor and inspiration – thanks for your continuous and passionate dedication for imaging science.”
The ESMI Award is given to an excellent scientist for her/his outstanding contribution to the interdisciplinary research in Imaging Science. The nominee must have contributed significantly to the knowledge in this field.
Congratulations, Dr. Gambhir!
The Early Detection of Cancer Conference at Stanford!
October 9, 2019
Canary Center at Stanford, Cancer Research UK, and the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute, hosted the Early Detection of Cancer Conference September 24 – 26 at the Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center, Stanford, California. Approximately 370 attendees, from 120 institutions, and 11 countries outside of the USA (including Australia, Canada, China, Finland, France, Great Britain, India, Netherlands, South Korea, Switzerland, and Ukraine) brought forth their latest findings and ideas. The annual Conference brings together experts in early detection from multiple disciplines to share ground breaking research and progress in the field.
The conference is part of a long-term commitment to invest in early detection research, to understand the biology behind early stage cancers, find new detection and screening methods, and enhance uptake and accuracy of screening.
The talks ventured widely, from finding ways to extract more information from cell-free DNA in blood, to building cohorts of people at high risk of cancer to prospectively study the emergence of disease, to the role of the tumor micro-environment and the immune system in cancer early detection, and going beyond traditional risk factors to better select populations for targeted cancer screening.
Highlights of this year’s conference included: More »
Project Baseline aims to map human health
February 3, 2019
What if we could view changes in the body earlier than early to warn of possible disease? That is the aim of Project Baseline, to map human health. The New York Times published “Project Baseline Aims to Ward Off Illness Before We Get Sick” by Anahad O’Connor (Oct 2018). The study is recruiting 10,000 adults. And each will be examined and followed for at least four years. So the goal is to discover the earliest warning signs of cancer, heart disease and other killers. Participants, the first of whom was enrolled in 2017, are called Baseline Explorers.
Project Baseline is the result of conversations in 2013, led by Google X’s Andrew Conrad. He consulted with Dr. Sam Gambhir, MD, chair of Radiology at Stanford University and director of the Canary Center for Cancer Early Detection. And also with Robert M. Califf, MD, professor of Cardiology in the School of Medicine, Duke University.
Conrad (now CEO of Verily, a spin out of Google X) was interested in exploring with these two notable healthcare thought leaders, one in cancer and the other in cardiology, about how to create what has become a landmark study. Both had deep experience in working with large patient cohorts and focus on early detection of disease. The project has formed teams across the country.
Seeking to create a baseline of health
Traditional trials focus on those who have a disease. So Project Baseline, as the name implies, mainly enrolls healthy individuals gathering enormous amounts of information. Baseline equips enrollees with wearable technology from Verily that tracks sleep patterns, heart rhythms and physical activity. The team is developing tools and technologies to collect, organize, analyze and curate the data.
And investigators are determining the best ways to share data with participants that is helpful to them. They are looking at how they can engage with their medical professionals.
Canary Foundation and the Canary Center at Stanford for Cancer Early Detection
Dr. Gambhir has served as Canary Foundation’s scientific director for more than a decade. He led the development of the Canary Center at Stanford for Cancer Early Detection. The Canary Center is a partnership forged in 2008 between Stanford University and Canary Foundation under the leadership of Don Listwin, based on the foundation’s mission. And interesting to know, Canary Center is the first program Stanford has focused entirely on cancer early detection.
American Cancer Society Report January 2019 is hopeful. Yet it motivates us to work harder at finding better tests
January 16, 2019
The new American Cancer Society report shows us that cancer deaths have dropped by 27% since their peak in 1991. The decrease is attributed to early detection, better treatments and a reduction in smoking rates. The ACS report also points to a socio-economic disparity in the numbers, based on broad county and area reports collected by Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER – a National Cancer Institute source of epidemiologic information on the incidence and survival rates of cancer in the United States, where access to education and healthcare remains a problem. Additionally, lower incidence has been slower in cancers such as lung and prostate. Also, rates of new cases rose for pancreatic and other cancers. While the overall decline in rates is great news, we must keep up the momentum to create early detection tests to save lives as cancer remains the second cause of death in the United States (22% in 2016), and a major health issue worldwide.
The report states that in 2019, 1,762,450 new cancer cases and 606,880 cancer deaths are projected to occur in the United States. From the report: “…the Lifetime probability of being diagnosed with invasive cancer is 39.3 % for men and 37.7% for women. Prostate, lung and colorectal cancers (CRCs) account for 42% of all cases in men, with prostate cancer alone accounting for nearly 1 in 5 new diagnoses. For women, the 3 most common cancers are breast, lung, and colorectum, which collectively represent one-half of all new diagnoses; breast cancer alone accounts for 30% of all new cancer diagnoses in women. The reasons for the excess overall risk in men are not fully understood, but partly reflect differences in environmental exposures, endogenous hormones, and probably complex interactions between these influences.”
Canary Foundation has been on the forefront of stimulating the field of cancer early detection globally by demonstrating cancer early detection tests as well as hosting scientific symposiums, mentoring researchers choosing the early detection path, and forging important national and international partnerships. To address access problems, Canary’s investments have focused, when possible, on cost-effective tests as a path to bridging the socio-economic disparities. Examples can be found in are our funded studies in enhance ultrasound using microbubbles, where ultrasound is found in doctor’s offices worldwide, representing an imaging modality in development useful for multiple cancers that is low-cost, non- invasive and with the additional benefit of not using radiation.
Canary remembers innovator and imaging expert Juergen Willmann
February 15, 2018
Juergen Willmann, MD, a professor of radiology at Stanford and a member of the Canary Foundation pancreatic team, died Jan. 8 in a car accident in Palo Alto.
Willmann was known for developing an imaging tool called targeted contrast microbubbles that, in combination with ultrasound, could be used to detect early tumors and target the delivery of drugs. Over the course of a decade, his lab at Stanford advanced the microbubble work from testing in animals all the way to the first clinical imaging trials in humans.
Here, some of Willmann’s closest colleagues share their feelings about his work, passion and the impact he had on the field of cancer early detection.
“I have been working closely with Juergen for more than a decade on the early detection of pancreatic cancer. We first met at a Canary Foundation conference at Stanford, where I had been asked to lead the Pancreas Cancer Early Detection Team. Juergen was just starting his career in radiology and had a strong background in engineering and cancer science. I had been working on biomarkers of pancreatic cancer using proteomic technology. We realized we could create an early detection test using microbubble technology and endoscopic ultrasound or abdominal ultrasound, if we could create a microbubble target that would be unique to pancreatic cancer and pre-cancer vasculature. … My lab spent the next 5 years finding and validating the target. … Together, with Juergen’s lab we were able to document the target was present in human tissue and then Juergen was able to demonstrate the feasibility of using microbubbles to detect very small pancreatic cancers in mouse models. After this decade of work, our next efforts were to move this into the clinical realm, with Juergen taking the lead on this part of the endeavor. Juergen was passionate about pancreatic cancer and early detection. He was a brilliant scientist, dedicated, and innovative. He will be deeply missed not only by his colleagues, but by the pancreatic cancer community as a whole. Ultimately, I hope that his collaborative work will remain a foundation for continued research in earlier detection of pancreatic cancer.”
Teri Brentnall, M.D.
Professor of Medicine, University of Washington
Pancreatic Team Leader, Canary Foundation
“Juergen was committed to helping advance the field of early cancer diagnostics. His work on using ultrasound imaging with targeted microbubbles will continue to have an impact for many years to come. His passion and optimism will be sorely missed. I will miss him dearly but know his contributions to biomedical science will live on.”
Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, M.D., Ph.D.
Chair, Department of Radiology
Director, Canary Center at Stanford for Cancer Early Detection
Stanford University School of Medicine
Andrew A. Berlin, Ph.D.
Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff
Draper
“Juergen was committed to helping advance the field of early cancer diagnostics. His work on using ultrasound imaging with targeted microbubbles will continue to have an impact for many years to come. His passion and optimism will be sorely missed. I will miss him dearly but know his contributions to biomedical science will live on.”
“A year ago I received an unexpected phone call from Dr. Juergen Willmann asking me to work with his team at the Canary Center at Stanford to make medical ultrasound more sensitive for early detection of cancer. Working closely with Juergen to adapt technologies Draper had originally developed for finding tiny hidden features in satellite images to instead seek out microscopic bubbles within cancer tumors turned out to be one of the best experiences I have ever had. His vision for enabling early cancer detection without using radiation, and his passion for collaborating with engineers like myself to pull it off, provided a sense of excitement and joy that inspired, and will continue to inspire, many of us to follow his lead until these technologies are used to help patients every day.”Canary funds four collaborative studies that pair faculty at Stanford with faculty at the University of Cambridge
Cancer early detection researchers develop future collaborations on a punting excursion in Cambridge, UK in September 2017.
Canary Foundation was ahead of the cancer early detection wave when it started in 2004. Since then, academic institutions, such as the University of Cambridge in the UK and the University of Calgary in Canada, have looked to Canary for advice as they build out their own cancer early detection programs.
This year, one such collaboration is taking shape in dynamic ways. Canary’s partnership with the University of Cambridge has resulted in four promising studies that partner researchers from Cambridge with researchers from Stanford. These projects, jointly funded by Canary Foundation and the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Centre, will explore innovative ways to detect prostate, lung, esophageal and renal cancers at an early stage.
In order to receive seed grants for these projects, applications had to include faculty at both Stanford and Cambridge. By fostering this transatlantic collaboration, Canary hopes to bring outstanding academic and clinical researchers from the US and UK together to tackle some of the most challenging questions in detecting cancer sooner.
The awards were announced at Cambridge’s third annual early detection symposium on January 15. You can read more about these collaborations below or by watching the video.
“A multi-modal approach to discover novel blood-based biomarkers for early detection of poor prognosis prostate cancer”
Tanya Stoyanova, an assistant professor of radiology at the Canary Center, is partnering with Vincent Gnanpragasam, an urologist at Cambridge University Hospitals, to identify different types of tumors in men with prostate cancer. The goal is to distinguish between aggressive tumors that would require immediate treatment, and slow-growing tumors that may not need treatment immediately but could be monitored closely so that any changes in the tumor can be picked up and acted upon. Their project will use data from a number of sources including tumor DNA found circulating in the blood, protein molecules found in cancer cells, and MRI imaging of the tumor.
“Early cancer detection through transcriptomic analysis of host immune cells”
Tom Soh, a professor of radiology at the Canary Center, is exploring new ways to detect early-stage lung cancer through his partnership with Robert Rintoul, a thoracic consultant at Cambridge University Hospitals. The pair is studying the immune cells in blood samples to see if there are particular signals that could be used to identify lung cancer early.
“Levitating a sponge for the early detection of Esophageal Adenocarcinoma”
Utkan Demirci, a professor of radiology at the Canary Center, is working with Rebecca Fitzgerald, Cambridge’s early detection program co-lead, to detect early signs of esophageal cancer. They will use a new nanotechnology developed by Demirci that separates different types of cells using a magnetic field. The technology will be applied to the mixture of cells collected from patients that are given a Cytosponge test developed by Fitzgerald that can diagnose Barrett’s esophagus – a common condition that, in some cases, develops into esophageal cancer.
“Early detection of renal cell carcinoma using DNA methylation markers in urine”
Olivier Gevaert, an assistant professor of medicine and of biomedical data science at Stanford, and John Leppert, an associate professor of urology at Stanford, are teaming up with Charlie Massie, a group leader in Cambridge’s early detection program. They will study whether it is possible to detect the early stages of a type of kidney cancer (Renal Cell Carcinoma) using biomarkers found in urine. Their research will look at specific signals in the DNA cells called methylation.
Canary Summit Brings Early Cancer Detection Researchers Together
May 10, 2016
More than 100 members of Stanford University’s scientific community met Tuesday, May 4 at the University Club in Palo Alto. Although their backgrounds were different, they had one major thing in common: cancer early detection. The event – the first ever Canary Summit – allowed researchers to share their work in that field, which ranged from innovative early detection using molecular imaging and cancer biomarkers, to the development of new technologies and medical devices for detecting cancer in its most early stages.
All those present were faculty and associates of the Canary Center at Stanford, a world-class facility dedicated to cancer early detection research programs. The Canary Foundation was instrumental in establishing the center and continues to fund it significantly.
At the Summit, the Canary Foundation awarded a $50,000 seed grant and committed to awarding $200,000 more in seed grants for attendees of the event to fund their research.
Scientists were encouraged to create posters that illustrated the focus and findings of their early detection research, and attendees voted on the best posters.
Top poster winners were:
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First Place: Intravascular magnetic enrichment of circulating tumor cells. Jessie Ge (presenting author). Authors: Tianjia J. Ge, Amin Aalipour, Ophir Vermesh and Sanjiv S. Gambhir.
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Second Place: NFIB is a novel metastasis-specific biomarker of small cell lung cancer. Jessika Baral (presenting author). Authors: Jessika Baral, Dian Yang and Julien Sage.
- Third Place: Label-free Magnetophoretic Isolation of Circulating Tumor Cells and Clusters from Blood. Jaeyoung Yang (presenting author). Authors: Jaeyoung Yang, N. Gozde Durmus, Hojae Lee, Baris D. Ercal, Ozlem Ercal, Huiping Zhang, Christian Hoerner, Alice C. Fan, Juergen K. Willmann, Ronald W. Davis, Lars Steinmetz and Utkan Demirci.
For more photos of the Canary Summit, visit our album on Facebook.
Registration Open for Canary Challenge 2014 in Honor of World Cancer Day
February 4, 2014
In honor of World Cancer Day, we are officially opening registration for the Canary Challenge 2014. Register for the ride now for $25 until March 31.
World Cancer Day is a chance to raise our collective voices in the name of improving general knowledge around cancer and dismissing misconceptions about the disease. For Canary, we’re emphasizing the need for more cancer early detection research, awareness, and advocacy. A great way to get involved is by participating in the Canary Challenge 2014.
This amazing one-day cycling event is about to get bigger and better than ever. The event will be hosted at HP’s campus in Palo Alto on Hanover St. We’re aiming high this year with a goal of raising $1.5 million, recruiting 150 teams and over 1,500 riders. This year’s ride will benefit the Canary Center at Stanford, supporting the researchers, scientists and doctors who are dedicated to cancer early detection. Register now and be part of the pioneering edge of cancer early detection research!
Upwards and Onwards: Canary Goals for 2014
January 29, 2014
The beginning of the year presents a cue to reflect on the successes of the previous year, and look forward to goals for the coming months. We’re delighted to announce progress with our research that has tremendous implications for future innovations, as well as our ambitions for the Canary Challenge 2014.
New technologies always evoke excitement and anticipation. Here at Canary, if a scientist wants to use a new technology to advance or improve the ways we detect cancer tumors early, we are all for it. Enhanced ultrasound using microbubble technology is one of these technologies.
This technology will change the way doctors view tumors. Microbubbles are miniature gas bubbles, mostly containing oxygen or air, which can be uniformly suspended in a liquid such as blood. Due to their size, they can pass through even the smallest of blood vessels and therefore are commonly used together with medical ultrasound imaging. As effective vehicles for highlighting blood in ultrasound images, Canary scientists use microbubbles as a contrast agent to view cancer tumors. Our clinical trials in Rome with women who have ovarian cancer have produced great results. Here in the US, we anticipate replicating microbubble technology for applications with breast cancer, prostate and pancreatic cancer.
We also value and actively seek out key partnerships, whether academic or industry. Soon we’ll announce a partnership with Genomic Health Inc. in the area of prostate cancer. We’re in talks with MD Anderson in Houston to help with coordinating a national multi-institutional lung cancer study.
We have great plans for our largest fundraising event, the Canary Challenge, which is about to get bigger and better than ever. Mark your calendar now for September 27, 2014. Register now for $25 until March 31. The event will be hosted at HP’s campus in Palo Alto on Hanover St. We’re aiming high this year with a goal of raising $1.5 million, recruiting 150 teams and over 1,500 riders. This year’s ride will benefit the Canary Center at Stanford, supporting the researchers, scientists and doctors who are dedicated to cancer early detection. Come be a part of an amazing one-day cycling event!
We’re pleased to announce that we will again be partnering with women’s pro cycling team extraordinaire, the Vanderkittens, who will host monthly training rides for Canary Challenge riders. Hani Juha, a cyclist and great coach, of Menlo Bike Club will also offer weekly training rides, an annual training program, as well as monthly clinics. We invite anyone and everyone in the Canary community to take advantage of these tailored experiences to brush up on their skills in time for the event.
What are your hopes and dreams for cancer early detection research at Canary Foundation? Let us know in the comments below!
What’s it Like to Ride the Canary Challenge?
December 16, 2013
Save the date to register for the Canary Challenge 2014- registration opens on January 4 in the New Year!
