New drugs and therapies have become indispensable for treating an array of cancers. Unfortunately, they can also cause damage to the heart, a side effect that has led to the development of a new discipline in medicine, called cardio-oncology.
Now teams from UC San Francisco and Stanford University will study why certain cancer treatments cause cardiotoxicities for some patients but not for others. Under the auspices of a Program Project Grant (PPG) from the National Institute of Health (NIH), the teams will combine resources from both universities, undertaking three interconnected projects that integrate multiple scientific disciplines and clinical and basic research programs to better understand toxicities associated with a novel class of cancer therapies called covalent kinase inhibitors.
Javid Moslehi, MD, William Grossman Distinguished Professor in Cardiology and UCSF Section Chief of Cardio-Oncology and Immunology, will lead a team at UCSF that will identify specific signaling pathways associated with cardiovascular toxicities from covalent kinase inhibitors – a type of enzyme inhibitor that can block the function of these enzymes and have proven effective for treating certain cancers (Project 1).