Awards and Honors: July 7, 2009

Posted 04:22 PM, July 06, 2009, by jaruiz

Francis Blankenberg, MD, associate professor of radiology and associate professor (by courtesy) of pediatrics, has been awarded stimulus funds by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for his project, "scVEGF Targeted Radiotherapy of Primary and Metastatic Mammary and Colonic Carcinoma."

Dr. Blankenberg received his medical degree from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). After finishing a general surgical intership and his residency at Stanford University Hospital, . . .

he completed a pediatric fellowship at Lucile Salter Packard Children's Hospital. Dr. Blankenberg left Stanford to become a clinical instructor of computer tomography and magnetic resonance imaging in the Department of Radiology at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). In July of 2001, he returned to Lucile Salter Packard Children's Hospital as an assistant professor of radiology. Dr. Blankenberg has over 95 publications and 3 U.S. and foreign patents.

Dr. Blankenberg's research grant, "scVEGF Targeted Radiotherapy of Primary and Metastatic Mammary and Colonic Carcinoma," focuses on tumor vasculature, which has a unique set of markers including vascular endothelial cell growth factor (VEGF) receptors. Prior efforts to starve tumors by attacking these blood vessels with new, highly selective anti-VEGF drugs as single agents have been largely unsuccessful. Dr. Blankenberg and his colleagues propose to attach radiotherapeutic isotopes to a new form of VEGF known as scVEGF and to use this radiolabeled material to attack not only the tumor blood vessels/supply but also tumor cells. Successful completion of this proposal will be critical in laying the preclinical groundwork for a new class of tumor vessel radiotherapeutic agents that, by attacking a tumor on two fronts, will be more effective than current anti-VEGF drugs.

The grant will support the hiring of Helen D'Arceuil, PhD, visiting assistant professor from Harvard and former researcher at the Lucas Center, who has expertise in small animal imaging with MRI of ischemic injury and brain development. Dr. D'Arceuil will now be assisting with the current award by employing her over twenty years experience in small animal modeling and imaging. The grant will also support the continued work of Zoia Levashova, PhD, who has over twenty years of experience in biochemical and animal model work at NIH. Dr. Levashova has spent the last four years with Dr. Blankenberg in the Nuclear Medicine Imaging Laboratory, and she has performed most of the pilot work for the current grant application and will play a major role in the successful execution of our proposal.

To read more about the award, please access "First Round of NIH Stimulus Funds Includes 18 Projects at Stanford School of Medicine."