Institute for Systems Biology to get $8M for cancer research

The Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) was chosen to receive nearly $8 million in federal funds for research into the genetic causes of cancer and potential targeted treatments.

President Obama announced the funding Wednesday as part of a plan to spend $5 billion on medical and scientific research, medical supplies and upgrading laboratory capacity. The funds come from the $787 billion economic-stimulus package.

A member of the Cancer Genome Atlas Research Network, ISB will analyze data gathered by research centers around the country with the goal of learning how environmental factors affect genes and cause cells to malfunction, leading to cancer. ISB will then use the knowledge to identify drug targets and therapeutic treatments. The principal investigator at ISB is Ilya Shmulevich.

The Research Network initially has focused on cancers of the brain, breast, kidney, lungs and ovaries. Part of ISB's role is to develop state-of-the-art software and other tools that assist researchers with processing and integrating data analysis.

The award is $7.88 million over five years, with $3.1 million of the funding approved so far, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The project is jointly run by the National Cancer Institute and the National Human Genome Research Institute, both under the NIH.

ISB, a nonprofit research institute on the north end of Lake Union, is hiring an additional eight people and dedicating some of its existing full-time positions to the project, ISB spokesman Todd Langton said.

The institute is pioneering an approach to medicine it calls P4 — predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory. The idea is that future medicine will consider the unique biology of an individual and his or her probability of developing various diseases, and then design appropriate treatments before a disease manifests.

More than 1,500 Americans die from cancer every day, according to the NIH, and the rate is expected to rise as the U.S. population ages.

Kristi Heim: 206-464-2718 or kheim@seattletimes.com