On Sept. 27, 2006, the National Cancer Institute announced funding for a major component of its $104 million, five-year Clinical Proteomic Technologies Initiative for Cancer (CPTI). Awards totaling $35.5 million over five years will establish a collaborative network of five Clinical Proteomic Technology Assessment for Cancer (CPTAC) teams.

The Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center will participate in the nationwide initiative to standardize proteomic technologies aimed at improving the detection and treatment of cancer. The Vanderbilt team, which will receive about $7.6 million over the five-year period, is led by Daniel C. Liebler, Ph.D., director of the Proteomics Laboratory in the Vanderbilt Mass Spectrometry Research Center, and director of the Jim Ayers Institute for Precancer Detection and Diagnosis.

The other centers are: the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; Purdue University; and the University of California, San Francisco, in collaboration with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.