Baylor University now finds itself in the company of such cancer-research giants as the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, which a state official Monday called phenomenal.

Jimmy Mansour, chairman of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, spoke at Baylor Monday and presented a $200,000 check for continued cancer research.

Under the direction of chemistry professors Kevin Pinney and Mary Lynn Trawick, Baylor has become a player in the pursuit of a cancer cure.

Graduate student Clinton George, left, and Baylor University sophomore Akshar Chauhan, seated, work with Baylor chemistry professors Mary Lynn Trawick, back, and Kevin Pinney, right, Monday at the Baylor Science Building.
Duane A. Laverty/Waco Tribune-Herald

They and about 30 students are studying compounds apparently toxic to human cancer cells.

“The research project of these two scientists is exactly what we at CPRIT are looking to fund,” Mansour said. “These types of investments will bring us close to the outcome we all so desperately want — a cure for cancer.”

The research institute has $3 billion at its disposal to disburse during the next 10 years, and it has just completed its first round of allocations. It awarded $61 million in grants for 66 projects, though it received 880 requests for projects totaling $1.3 billion in value, William Gimson, director of the CPRIT, said.

Gimson formerly served as chief operating officer of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, but Mansour recruited him to oversee Texas’ cancer research program.

He said Baylor and 12 other entities are receiving money in the “high-risk, high-impact category.” That means much more research lies ahead, “but it could be game- changing in the fight against cancer.”

He described Baylor’s work as “out-of-the-box, interesting science,” adding that small labs win some of the biggest battles against cancer.

Creation of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute was made possible when Texas voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2007 that authorized spending $3 billion to battle a disease that will claim 40,000 Texans this year, while another 100,000 will experience a cancer diagnosis.

More than 100 scientists from around the country decided which projects deserve funding. All work outside Texas to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest, but all funds must go to projects inside Texas.

About 90 percent of the funding targets cancer research. Selection of those projects is overseen by Phillip Sharp, a Nobel Prize winner and former director of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. Funding for projects related to cancer prevention is overseen by Steve Wyatt, dean of the College of Public Health at the University of Kentucky.

The $3 billion to be spent also includes a “commercialization” component, which means finding marketplace applications for Texas’ cancer-fighting advancements.

Pinney, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, said he has been doing cancer research since he arrived at Baylor in 1993, “but during the last three or four years, we have been focusing on a particular molecule.”

Baylor University professor Kevin Pinney works on a molecular model in his lab.
Jerry Larson/Waco Tribune-Herald

He works closely with Mary Lynn Trawick, a chemistry and biochemistry associate professor, and between them they have received between 40 and 50 grants from inside and outside Baylor.

“We have discovered what looks like a series of compounds that demonstrate really remarkable toxicity against human cancer cells,” Pinney said. “Now, what we want to do is expand that to take not only the lead compound but also related compounds and do some significant additional investigation to see just how potent they might actually be.”

The research “could eventually lead to a new drug discovery,” Trawick said.

But much remains to be done. The compounds have proved harmful to living cancer cells in cultures, but their effectiveness has not been tested in “living systems,” such as laboratory animals.

Helping in this area will be the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, which is a leader in tumor imaging.

Continued research at Baylor also may tie in with research Pinney has been involved with for years on vascular-disrupting agents — compounds that cut off blood flow to tumors, which starves the tumors of oxygen and kills them. Baylor has been awarded 16 patents because of Pinney’s cancer-related work.

mcopeland@wacotrib.com

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