(Philadelphia, PA) - The University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine has been named a Breast Cancer Center of Excellence by the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program. This designation, which includes a five-year, $10 million grant to Lewis A. Chodosh, MD, PhD, Principal Investigator and Director of this Center of Excellence, establishes Penn as one of only 14 such sites in the United States. The Center represents a multidisciplinary approach to understanding breast cancer progression using genetically engineered mouse models and state-of-the art non-invasive imaging techniques.

"We are honored and proud to have earned this prestigious designation by the Department of Defense," says Dr. Arthur H. Rubenstein, Executive Vice President of the University of Pennsylvania for the Health System and Dean of the School of Medicine. "It is a testament to the high caliber of our physician-scientists and the programs they lead to have been selected to join the group of institutions named as Centers of Excellence. This award further strengthens our excellent research within the Abramson Cancer Center, which is dedicated to developing innovative and effective therapies for cancer patients."

The natural history of breast cancer involves the progression of cancer cells to adopt increasingly aggressive properties, such as resistance to chemotherapy and the ability to invade tissues and metastasize. What's more, by the time that breast cancers have been diagnosed, tumor cells may have already traveled to distant sites in the body where they may lay dormant in a clinically undetected state. Consequently, cancers that appear cured may resurface as local or distant recurrences 10 to 20 years later. Breast cancer progression from disease onset to distant metastasis and recurrence is ultimately responsible for essentially all breast cancer deaths.

"While tumor progression is a problem of unrivaled clinical importance, the mechanisms underlying it
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Contact: Karen Kreeger
karen.kreeger@uphs.upenn.edu
215-349-5658
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
27-Jul-2005

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