Download Cancer Research Pioneer To Join Ordway Research

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 20, 2005
Contact: Sharon Hanley (518) 641-6406 [email protected]
CANCER RESEARCH PIONEER TO JOIN ORDWAY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
CANCER CENTER
Albany, New York— Dr. Gennadi Glinsky, who has pioneered cancer translational
genomics research focusing on prostate and breast cancer, will join the Ordway Research
Institute in Albany beginning May 2, 2005. Dr. Glinsky will head the Translational and
Functional Genomics Laboratory in the Cancer Center, with a joint appointment in the
Division of Urology of Albany Medical College. The Division of Urology will organize
prostate cancer clinical trials of the diagnostic assay developed by Dr. Glinsky
The gene expression profile discovered by Dr. Glinsky and his team is highly informative
in predicting the positive or negative outcome of therapy in cancer patients diagnosed
with multiple types of cancer. “Those patients can be directed toward options that include
more aggressive, often customized therapeutic strategies,” Glinsky said. “Many of those
patients can consider clinical trial options that they may otherwise have overlooked or not
felt justified.
“If you identify the (patients) who are at a high likelihood of therapy failure, and
therefore are candidates for more aggressive and often individually designed therapies,
required treatment can be initiated closer to the time of diagnosis rather than much later
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when the disease has spread and become incurable.” Knowledge of the genetic and
molecular markers associated with the need for highly aggressive clinical cancer therapy
may lead to identification of crucial genetic pathways who’s components would become
attractive targets for development of novel, target-tailored individualized anti-cancer
drugs.
Dr. Glinsky gave a platform presentation discussing the success of these methodologies
at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting on April 17, 2005 in San
Diego, California.
“The era of gene expression profiling of tumors has matured rapidly, thanks to Dr.
Glinsky and a few other laboratories.” states Dr. Paul J. Davis, Director of Ordway
Research Institute. He continues, “Dr. Glinsky’s profiling strategy not only predicts with
a high level of certainty the future behavior of prostate or breast cancers in individual
patients, but it also directs the oncologist to the best specific chemotherapeutic regimen
for each tumor. This is an enormous advance. Currently, a one-size fits all approach in
cancer chemotherapy causes us to treat all patients with a given tumor in the same
expensive way. Dr. Glinsky’s approach has implications for the skyrocketing costs of
cancer care, in that it identifies the patients who need intensive therapy and separates
them from patients who will do very well with less toxic, less expensive care.”
Background Information:
Ordway Research Institute, Inc. is a not-for-profit, freestanding corporation with specific
research themes and a mission to translate basic science observations into therapeutics.
The Institute is committed to fostering inter-institutional, competitively-funded research.
The research themes of the Institute expand on existing regional programs of excellence
in New York’s Tech Valley. Ordway’s research takes place in The Center for Medical
Science building at University Heights in Albany that houses the Institute’s researchers
and investigators, plus research teams from the Wadsworth Center/New York State
Department of Health. Ordway is affiliated with the Charitable Leadership Foundation in
Clifton Park, New York and with Albany Medical College. The Center for Medical
Science is the first research laboratory facility conceived in the region to serve multiple
research institutions.
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