WITHIN 10 YEARS, we can optimize diet and drug interventions to reduce cancer initiation, progression, and metastasis.

Preliminary findings suggest that users of newly available GLP-1 agonists like Ozempic and Mounjaro show reduced rates of cancer, and scientists suspect this benefit is due to more than just the effects of weight loss.

How exactly do these drugs positively influence cancer prevalence? This question remains unanswered, in part, because of the relationship between weight, diet, and disease – a long-standing unknown in cancer research and care. It is clear that some of the most lethal cancers are diagnosed at higher rates in obese patients and that diet plays a role. Yet we still know next to nothing about leveraging nutrition and weight-loss drugs to prevent cancer, slow its growth, and enhance anticancer therapies.

Jonathan Long, PhD, (Stanford) and Rushika Perera, PhD, (UCSF) will advance the field of precision nutrition to fill these gaps, investigating at the molecular level how diet influences the development, progression, and treatment of pancreatic cancer – one of the deadliest forms of the disease. They will learn why obesity increases the risk of developing cancer, how GLP-1 agonist weight-loss interventions reduce this risk, and what cancer patients should eat to increase the effectiveness of their treatments.

Findings from Project FEAST will help develop new clinical trials and offer new treatments for pancreatic and other obesity-associated cancers. This work will provide a robust scientific foundation for understanding and implementing diet and drug interventions to better combat cancer.

Project Team

 

Stanford

• Jonathan Long, PhD (Co-PI)
• Laura Attardi, PhD
• Edgar Engleman, MD
• Tracey McLaughlin, MD
• Michael Snyder, PhD
• Katrin Svensson, PhD

UCSF

• Rushika Perera, PhD (Co-PI)
• Sagar Bapat, MD, PhD
• Roarke Kamber, PhD
• Suneil Koliwad, MD, PhD
• Davide Ruggero, PhD
• Valerie Weaver, PhD

 

WITHIN 10 YEARS, we can engineer programmable T cells to destroy the most treatment-resistant tumors.

Standardized treatment plans for cancer are designed to target general features of disease. But this one-size-fits-many approach does not account for the variation in biology and experience that make every patient’s illness different.

Sylvia Plevritis, PhD, (Stanford) and Julian Hong, MD, (UCSF) are creating computational tools to track the precise evolution of each patient’s disease and connect them to the best possible care. Their team seeks to revolutionize personalized cancer treatment by developing an advanced AI foundation model that integrates vast amounts of clinical oncology and cancer biology data. The Project IMPACT-AI tools will handle levels of information beyond the capabilities of any current AI model, combining electronic medical records with pathology, radiology, and molecular profiling data. This foundation model will then be fine-tuned to create task-specific models for clinical trials, therapy selection, and early detection of treatment inefficacy.

By bridging the gap between clinical care and biological processes, this project will deepen our understanding of cancer evolution, enhance the ability of physicians to treat patients, and pinpoint more effective therapies earlier in the treatment process. Project IMPACT-AI is building AI tools to create optimal treatment plans unique to each individual patient.  

Project Team

 

Stanford

• Sylvia Plevritis, PhD (Co-PI)
• Emily Alsentzer, PhD
• Akshay Chaudhari, PhD
• Steven Corsello, MD
• Renu Dhanasekaran, MD
• Jason Fries, PhD
• Lipika Goyal, MD
• Jeanne Shen, MD

UCSF

• Julian Hong, MD, (Co-PI)
• Jean Feng, PhD
• John Gordan, MD, PhD
• Franklin Huang, MD, PhD
• Katie Kelley, MD
• Michael Li, MD, MPH
• Anobel Odisho, MD
• Madhumita Sushil, PhD
• Travis Zack, MD, PhD

 

WITHIN 10 YEARS, we can build artificial intelligence systems to integrate clinical and biological data for precise, personalized cancer treatments.

Solid tumors account for over 90% of all cancers, and despite innovations in treatment, many remain incurable, especially at advanced stages.

That’s because these tumors are highly complex. They are made up of diverse cell types and mutations that surround themselves with drug-resistant barriers and immunosuppressive environments. To destroy them, a therapy must maneuver on multiple fronts, operating with an advanced level of intelligence and specificity to overcome obstacles and reach diverse targets.

Crystal Mackal, MD, (Stanford) and Kole Roybal, PhD, (UCSF) are creating cellular therapies to do exactly that, leveraging artificial intelligence and cellular engineering to safely and precisely eliminate cancer. Project PROMISE tailors cell therapy to the sophisticated variation inherent in solid tumors.

Their team will analyze millions of T cells from vast data derived from cellular therapy patients to identify modifications that boost therapeutic potential. With this refined information, Project PROMISE will transform T cells into integrated circuits capable of detecting and pursuing multiple targets.

Project Team

 

Stanford

• Crystal Mackall, MD (Co-PI)
• Ash Alizadeh, MD, PhD
• Steve Feldman, PhD
• Olivier Gevaert, PhD
• Zinaida Good, PhD
• David Miklos, MD, PhD
• Garry Nolan, PhD
• Stanley Qi, PhD
• Sneha Ramakrishna, MD
• Theodore Roth, MD, PhD
• Bita Sahaf, PhD

UCSF

• Kole Roybal, PhD (Co-PI)
• Greg Allen, MD, PhD
• Julia Carnevale, MD
• Averil Ma, MD
• Alex Marson, MD, PhD
• Brian Shy, MD, PhD
• Matt Spitzer, PhD

WITHIN 10 YEARS, we can radically increase the availability and success of cellular therapy by engineering immune cells inside the body.

Cellular therapy has brightened the prognosis for blood cancers, proving successful at slowing or curing otherwise untreatable diseases.

Despite this achievement, clinical impact has been limited. Cellular therapy is expensive, complicated to manufacture in the lab, and limited to patients healthy enough to withstand the necessary preconditioning with chemotherapy. Even with access, patients experience treatment failure 15% to 50% of the time because the therapeutic cells may not function well enough or last long enough to destroy the cancer they are designed to target.

Now, Michael Fischbach, PhD, (Stanford) and Justin Eyquem, PhD, (UCSF) and  their team are creating a new generation of cellular therapies. Project VITAL is developing a treatment that would not only be more affordable and effective but also potentially suitable for a wider range of cancers and other diseases.

In close partnership with Nobel Prize laureate Jennifer Doudna, PhD, they are developing a CRISPR-based method to engineer immune cells within the body itself. Their approach introduces a genetic-engineering element directly into the blood, bypassing onerous lab manufacturing and patient preconditioning. This method creates a flexible, persistent population of cancer-destroying T cells that expands and contracts in a dynamic relationship with each patient’s individual disease. With demonstrated success in mouse models, the team expects clinical trials to begin in humans within three years.

Project Team

 

Stanford

• Michael Fischbach, PhD (Co-PI)
• Chris Garcia, PhD
• Crystal Mackall, MD
• Ansuman Satpathy, MD, PhD

UCSF

• Justin Eyquem, PhD (Co-PI)
• Julia Carnevale, MD
• Jennifer Doudna, PhD
• Shanshan Lang, PhD