Translational Cancer Therapeutics Center

This joint MUSC/USC program will support two endowed professorships. The first is held by Kenneth Tew, MUSC's new pharmacology department chair who has an international reputation for research in the molecular pharmacology of cancer drugs. His program focuses on two major themes that converge in the area of cancer drug development and resistance. The other professorship will be recruited at USC. Frank Berger, a USC biology professor, will direct the program at USC and both universities will generate matching funds.

Berger and Tew will study the development and testing of anti-cancer drugs for the prevention and treatment of cancer, with an emphasis on colon cancer. The grant draws on the faculty and research expertise at USC and MUSC in the field of cancer drug therapeutics. USC already has an $11 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for its Center for Colon Cancer Research.

The center's goal is to develop new collaborations that will generate novel strategies to overcome tumor drug resistance in cancer therapeutics. This collaboration will be further accelerated by the new South Carolina Health Sciences Collaborative, which brings together Palmetto Health, the Greenville Hospital System, the Medical University of South Carolina, and USC to increase health sciences research and improve the health of the citizens of South Carolina.