On Sept. 4, 2003, the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), a component of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded a five-year grant of $6.7 million to a team headed by scientists at the University of Georgia for research that could eventually help in the treatment of certain kinds of cancer and Parkinson’s Disease.

The grant is cosponsored by the National Cancer Institute and thereby counts toward the total award dollars needed to apply for an NCI Comprehensive Cancer Center Planning Award. This could be an important step in progress for the Georgia Cancer Coalition, in which UGA is collaborating with the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta to form the Georgia Cancer Research Center.

The large-scale cooperative project will include researchers from UGA, Georgia Tech, the Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, Yale University and Bresagen, Inc., as well as scientists from Japan.

The NCRR supports primary research to create and develop critical resources, models and technologies. NCRR funding also provides biomedical researchers with access to diverse instrumentation, technologies, basic and clinical research facilities, animal models, genetic stocks, biomaterials and more. These resources enable scientific advances in biomedicine that lead to the development of lifesaving drugs, devices and therapies.

The research funded by the grant will focus on technologies to map the “glycome” of stem cell lines established by Bresagen, a private research company with offices and laboratories in Athens. “Glycome” describes all the complex carbohydrates attached to proteins and lipids that are made by a cell, as well as the enzymes responsible for their metabolism. It also describes the carbohydrate binding proteins that function by recognizing these complex carbohydrates.

This technology will allow the glycomic analysis of small numbers of cells and the means to isolate or kill these particular cells. The expected outcome will be directly applicable to the isolation of certain types of nerve cells for treatment of such diseases as Parkinson’s, as well as development of new ways to diagnose and treat cancer.

The Georgia Cancer Coalition (GCC) is a statewide public-private network of people and organizations – doctors, hospitals, government agencies, public health services, survivor and community health groups, universities, industries, nonprofits and interested individuals – working together to save lives and reduce human suffering from cancer.