Cancer-research scientist launches new UCSF cancer center
By: Brigid Gaffikin
Examiner Staff Writer
June 1, 2009
Dr. Frank McCormick is one of the world’s leading cancer-research scientists and the director of the UCSF’s Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center which is opening a new, third campus at Mission Bay on Tuesday. 
How is the new site going to be used? Right now the research specialties located at the Mission Bay site are brain cancer and prostate cancer. We also have a group of researchers working on developing new ways to identify cancer targets and to develop new therapies for cancer patients.
What’s a cancer target? Research on cancer targets looks for ways to identify mutations in the cancer genome that respond to therapeutic interventions. There are breast cancer treatments, for example, that came out of gene research.
What about your research — what do you specialize in? I run a lab at USCF that looks at the gene mutation that lies behind 30 percent of all cancers. It was the first gene identified in human tumors and has been very difficult to target with therapy.
How is the center contributing to what’s new about cancer research? It’s been known for years that roughly 20 percent of patients don’t respond to the drug developed for the broad type of cancer they have. Now we can narrow down our research and have a better chance of developing cancer therapies that help people with, say, specific types of breast cancer. The higher success rates of those therapies make it easier to get drugs approved as well.
