University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center will be designated as a Specialized Program of Research Excellence, or SPORE, by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for research initiatives to advance new prostate cancer treatments.

This highly competitive designation comes with more than $11 million in federal funding to support new and existing research efforts, according to Dr. David Jarrard, surgical oncologist and deputy director, UW Carbone, and professor of urology, University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

“It’s really an exciting time for prostate cancer research here,” he said. “This will provide an opportunity to take observations from the laboratories and bring them to our patients as new therapeutics.”

Moving research discoveries from the laboratory bench to clinical treatments has been the precise intention of SPORE grants since the program began in 1992, according to NCI. SPORE grants are designed to enable a rapid and efficient evolution of scientific findings into clinical settings. They also support research to determine the causes of cancer in individuals and populations.

This SPORE grant will focus on methods that could improve treatments for patients with more advanced-stage prostate cancer, an area of growing need in recent years, according to Dr. Douglas McNeel, professor of medicine, UW School of Medicine and Public Health, and medical oncologist and director of solid tumor immunology research at UW Carbone.

“We want to improve outcomes for patients,” he said. “To do that we need to catch it early and understand how to treat prostate cancer on the individual level and prevent it from recurring.”

The three main areas the SPORE grant will focus on are the immediate environment surrounding a prostate tumor which is referred to as the tumor microenvironment, the diversity of prostate cancer and how different cancer types respond to treatment within an individual patient, and cancer vaccines as treatments for prostate cancer.

The microenvironment and the variation seen among patients are relatively understudied in prostate cancer, according to Jarrard.

“Most research and care focus on the cancer itself, but clearly the environment around the cancer plays an important role in treatment response and resistance,” Jarrard said.

He and Drs. Josh Lang, Dave Beebe, Steve Cho, Melissa Skala and Sheena Kerr are leading research meant to understand how the microenvironment can lead to cancer progression, metastatic disease and treatment resistance. They also are working to identify biomarkers that can be selectively targeted for treatment. The project involves using patient tumor tissue to recreate an authentic environment for testing personalized approaches to therapy.

The team thinks that while the microenvironment could impact cancer treatment and development, so could differences within the tumor itself. For example, as a cancer progresses, there can be differences between tumor sites such that a treatment works on some tumors but not others.

That is why Drs. Glenn Liu, Robert Jeraj and John Floberg are investigating an approach to imaging that can identify which lesions are responding to a given treatment and which are not, in order to optimize treatment approaches.

“We can target the individual lesions that aren’t responding to hormonal therapy and hopefully allow patients to benefit longer from the therapies they’re already on,” McNeel said.

Finally, McNeel and Jarrard are also working with Dr. Christos Kyriakopoulos to advance research that has already seen success in a phase 1 clinical trial where a vaccine targets a factor that drives prostate cancer development and progression and stimulates the immune system to fight cancer cells.

“We’re basically using standard hormonal therapies to make the cancer more susceptible to an immune-based treatment,” McNeel said.

The SPORE award also provides funding for new ideas and emerging research, especially among researchers who are early in their careers and can benefit from resources and mentorship.

“This is a great opportunity to help develop a new population of researchers, including more underrepresented groups, in the cancer research field,” Jarrard said.

This is one of only a few active SPORE awards in the United States, and it is only the second SPORE award given to an institution in Wisconsin. The first was awarded to UW Carbone in 2016 for head and neck cancer. That grant was renewed in 2022.

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University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center will be designated as a Specialized Program of Research Excellence, or SPORE, by the National Cancer Institute for research initiatives to advance new prostate cancer treatments.




UW Carbone Cancer Center Receives SPORE Designation, Federal Grant to Support Prostate Cancer Research 

Dr. Dwight Perry’s voice is an important part of his work as a minister and theological education leader. So when his wife noticed he sounded a little too raspy in December 2005, Perry went to his doctor. Follow ups with a specialist at 

 confirmed he had stage one laryngeal cancer.

“It was a shock to me,” he said. “I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I lead a fairly healthy lifestyle.”

Following multiple surgeries and eventual radiation treatment, Perry is cancer free and feels he received the best possible care from UW Carbone. Even after moving to Chicago, he still commutes to Madison for annual visits with his oncologists, Drs. 

“The care and treatment at the Carbone Center are excellent,” Perry said.

UW Carbone’s expertise in head and neck cancer treatment and research are held in high esteem nationally, as evidenced by the National Cancer Institute awarding UW a Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) grant in 2016. UW’s 

 was the first such grant given to a Wisconsin institution, and their accomplishments led NCI to renew their SPORE funding and designation for another 5 years.

In this next phase, SPORE leaders have defined several projects that include improving immunotherapy responses and identifying new biomarkers that can predict treatment effectiveness before a patient starts that therapy.

While immunotherapy has been a significant break-through treatment for many patients, they are not effective for many others. Researchers are working to understand more of the barriers that make tumors unresponsive in order to overcome them.

Harari, who serves as Director of the Wisconsin HN SPORE, is partnering with Drs. 

 and Jamey Weichert on an effort that combines immunotherapy with targeted radionuclide therapy. Using a molecule developed by Weichert, researchers can directly target cancer cells for both imaging and therapeutic purposes.

In mouse models, this molecule can be used to deliver an individually-calculated low radiation dose directly to cancer cells. Combined with immunotherapy, the treatments eliminated the cancer cells while leaving surrounding healthy tissue unaffected. This method of radiation has also helped make even “cold” tumors responsive to treatment.

“It’s a highly personalized treatment,” Morris said of the radiation dosimetry involved.

The study mice have also shown a lasting immune response to their cancer. Project leaders hope to initiate phase 1 clinical trials for patients with metastatic and recurrent cancer in the next few years.

Another immunotherapy-related project involves researching how a specific family of molecules, called TAM receptors, work together to trick a patient’s immune system into believing cancer cells are normal tissue, and if this effect can be reversed through a combination of immune checkpoint inhibitors and radiation.

“We know that these molecules keep the tumor cold, but if we hit those molecules and flip the switch, can we make you sensitive to these already-available immunotherapies?” said Dr. Deric Wheeler, who is co-leading the project with Dr. 

This project also includes plans for a clinical trial to evaluate that combination therapy.

Harari is also working with Drs. Dave Beebe and Sheena Kerr on efforts to identify biomarkers that can predict how a patient would respond to various treatments.

Currently, clinicians can’t predict how effective a certain course of treatment will be for a patient until after that regimen has started. This project is intended to optimize treatment plans and save patients unnecessary side effects of treatments less likely to work.

“In terms of survivorship, getting the best treatment first is obviously what’s best for the patient, rather than possibly going for a therapy that doesn’t help them, and then they have to try another therapy,” said Kerr.

Researchers will evaluate which biomarkers are linked to existing patients’ treatment effectiveness through use of single cell RNA sequencing of tumor cells, tissue microarrays that contain tumor tissue from multiple patients, and circulating tumor DNA that is captured and filtered by a microfluidic device Beebe developed.

This project also includes a clinical pilot study that would create artificial tumor microenvironments using cells isolated from patient tumor tissue. Having these patient-specific environments, researchers can compare how treatments perform on the devices and how consistent that is with the real-time treatments of those patients.

Beebe is hopeful this engineered environment will prove a better lab testing model than using animals and become the future standard practice.

A key driver for SPORE researchers’ success has been access to large variety of head and neck cancer patient tissues.

Through new outreach efforts, including an informational video, SPORE collaborators were able to increase consent levels from about 10 percent when the SPORE first began in 2016, to more than 90 percent now.

Harari notes that all of these elements contribute directly to the ultimate mission of the SPORE, which is to advance research and treatment success for patients with head and neck cancer.

UW Carbone’s expertise in head and neck cancer treatment and research are held in high esteem nationally, as evidenced by the National Cancer Institute awarding UW a Specialized Program of Research Excellence grant in 2016.

UW School of Medicine

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