Boston University Medical Campus
Medicine

The Center for the Molecular Stress Response formally began on April 16, 2002 when Stuart Calderwood, Ph.D., Center Chief and Professor of Medicine; Jianlin Gong, M.D, Associate Professor of Medicine; and Alexzander Asea, Ph.D., Deputy Director, Assistant Professor of Medicine, came to BUMC’s Department of Medicine from the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. The Center’s immediate aim was to establish research projects concerning the regulation of the heat shock response; the examination of the role of HSPs in the immune response; and the development of anticancer vaccines. These research projects will serve as a foundation for building the Center, and will eventually be expanded on a broader basis.

The Center moved into temporary research space on the sixth floor of the Evans Building and has begun to build its research laboratory. Recent activities have been focused on the nuts and bolts of establishing the Center, including facility issues, hiring staff, purchasing equipment, and organizational issues related to administration. Center faculty have begun to carry out experiments and hope to submit their first major paper shortly.

Since moving to BUSM in April, the Center has submitted a total of four grant proposals as principal investigators and three other proposals in collaboration with other research groups. In addition, Dr. Asea has received an NIH award for his project titled, “Circulating HSP70 in hyperthermia and cancer therapy” (R01 CA091889), and Dr. Calderwood has obtained a commercial award from the TherOx Corporation to study the use of aqueous oxygen as an antagonist of tumor hypoxia.

During the next academic year, the Center hopes to expand its external funding base; continue to build the laboratory; and establish collaborations with investigators both within and outside of BUMC as a way to establish a broad-based program to examine the role of stress response and stress proteins in medicine and biology. Plans are currently underway to bring several other leading researchers to the Center. In addition, at least six new postdoctoral fellows, as well as a number of technicians and graduate students, will join the lab in the coming year.