News In Brief

Lam receives $1.5 million in grants for peptide research

Kit S. Lam, chief of the division of hematology/oncology at the UC Davis School of Medicine and Medical Center, has received grants totaling more than $1.5 million to use his patented techniques of combinatorial chemistry to develop new cancer drugs and diagnostic agents.

The California Cancer Research Program awarded Lam a three-year grant for $852,072 to develop new drugs for ovarian cancer. He will use combinatorial chemistry to identify peptides that bind to the surface receptors of ovarian cancer cells. These peptides may be effective in killing tumor cells directly or they may be used as carriers for existing drugs and radioactive agents that target ovarian cancer cells.

Lam will work with Robert O'Donnell, an associate professor of internal medicine; Sally DeNardo, professor of internal medicine; and Gerald DeNardo, professor emeritus of internal medicine, on the ovarian cancer project. The DeNardos direct the radioiummontherapy program at the UC Davis Medical Center.

The National Cancer Institute has awarded Lam a three-year grant for $736,595 to develop new methods of rapidly analyzing large numbers of abnormal pro- teins inside the cell that are responsible for cancer formation. This new field, called cancer proteomics, shows great promise in identifying new targets for drugs that kill cancer as well as in developing new and better ways to diagnose cancer.

Lam will work with Jeff Gregg, an assistant professor of pathology at the UC Davis School of Medicine and Medical Center, and Olulanu Aina, a postgraduate researcher, on the cancer proteomics project.