Amount Requested: $1,517,788

To offer greater benefit to cancer patients throughout Texas, the U.S. and the world, M. D. Anderson will utilize its knowledge about the genetic causes of cancer and the human genome, combined with the development of new research technologies, to bring powerful new approaches to the development of diagnostic tests and cancer treatments.  Specifically, the Institute for Personalized Cancer Therapy will use this FY 2010 funding to link together preclinical investigation in drug development, a pharmaceutical development center that can produce and test drugs according to federal standard Good Laboratory Practices, state-of-the-art biostatistics and informatics, and the country's largest clinical research program testing new cancer treatments. The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center is one of the nation’s original three Comprehensive Cancer Centers designated by the National Cancer Act of 1971, and is one of 39 such centers today. Since 1944, almost 700,000 patients have turned to M.D. Anderson for cancer care in the form of surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, immunotherapy or combinations of these and other treatments.