The Tow Center for Developmental Oncology supports both research projects initiated by individual faculty and trainees, as well as infrastructure projects and inter-disciplinary team science research collaborations to propel translational research in pediatric and young-onset cancers within and outside of MSK.
Current team science projects include the Integrative Sarcoma Discovery Atlas, consisting of retrospective and prospective studies overseen by the Atlas Working Group, comprised of membership from the MSK Tow Center for Developmental Oncology, Sarcoma Center, Department of Pediatrics, Center for Adolescent and Young Adult Cancers, Experimental Immuno-Oncology Center, Departments of Surgery, Medicine, Human Oncology & Pathogenesis Program, Sloan Kettering Institute, and the MSK Computational Oncology Program. The project involves collaborators with diverse expertise with the common goal of identifying carcinogenic, immunologic, and physiologic mechanisms as well as therapeutic targets in diverse patient sarcomas. All data are managed using the MSK institutional data governance framework and available to the community via CBioPortal.
We are also supporting the MSK Cancer Proteomics Therapeutics Initiative to develop improved methods for cancer proteomics, in collaboration with the SKI Proteomics Core and Clinical Proteomics Laboratory in the Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, and promote dissemination of novel tools to the basic and translational science community. For example, the Initiative recently implemented integrative proteogenomics for the discovery of cancer proteomes, now available as an open tool via the MSK Bioinformatics, Genomics, and Proteomics Core Facilities.
The Tow Center is also helping to develop Investigational Diagnostics. In collaboration with the Department of Pediatrics, Department of Medicine, and Department of Pathology & Laboratory Medicine, we are working to develop clinical-grade assays for early cancer detection and monitoring, as well as to improve the clinical management of pediatric and adult oncology patients at risk of invasive infections and immune complications using blood plasma proteomic and metagenomic technologies.
If you’d like to learn more or be part of these projects, please reach out to devonc@mskcc.org.