# Brain Tumor SPORE Grant

> **NIH NIH P50** · UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO · 2020 · $2,375,000

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
 This SPORE renewal application represents the efforts of interdisciplinary teams of investigators
from the Neuro-Oncology Program of the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center
(HDFCCC) to apply their knowledge and expertise to translational research focused on brain cancer.
This SPORE proposal has three overall specific objectives: 1) to identify factors that contribute to the
likelihood of surviving brain cancer; 2) to identify noninvasive imaging parameters that can help predict
therapeutic response in patients with glioma; and 3) to develop better mechanism-based therapies for
the treatment of brain cancer. The heart of the proposal is four new translational research projects,
each driven by teams of applied and basic investigators, and each intended to create novel tools and
therapeutic modalities useful in the diagnosis and treatment of brain tumors. Project 1 is a new study
motivated by previous SPORE-funded successes in identifying molecular features (TERT promoter
mutation, 1p/19q deletion, and IDH1 mutation) that divide lower grade glioma into 4 distinct groups, and
along with work from others, led to modifications in WHO criteria for glioma classification. Project 1
investigators now hypothesize that an analysis of levels of various circulating myeloid cells, rather than
of tumor molecular features, may yield advances in differentiating prognosis for IDH-wildtype
glioblastoma after accounting for certain clinical characteristics. They will test this hypothesis using an
approach they pioneered that defines and quantitates aberrant immune cell populations from fresh or
frozen peripheral blood based on patterns of DNA methylation in the immune cell genomes, a new field
of study called immunomethylomics. Project 2 is a new study facilitated in part by previous SPORE-
funded studies that used MRSI to noninvasively define changes in steady state levels of metabolites
that related to low-grade glioma progression. In Project 2 the investigators hypothesize that the use of
hyperpolarized carbon-13 (C13) imaging, developed at UCSF, can provide complementary information
about metabolic processes, which in turn can be used to noninvasively differentiate between normal
brain, tumor and gliosis in the human glioblastoma setting. Project 3 is a new study that evolved from
groundbreaking work from the Costello lab that identified GABP as the transcription factor that uniquely
binds the mutant TERT promoter and drives TERT expression, cellular immortalization and
tumorigenesis in many types of cancer including glioma. The work proposed in Project 3 will lay the
groundwork for the development of mutant TERT promoter-based therapeutics by assessing the
uniformity of TERT promoter mutations in human glioma samples, by directly defining the importance of
GABP in TERT activation, and by devising ways to increase cell death following TERT silencing.
Project 4 is a new project based on the observation that inhibition of ...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9999410
- **Project number:** 5P50CA097257-18
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO
- **Principal Investigator:** MITCHEL S. BERGER
- **Activity code:** P50 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $2,375,000
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2002-09-20 → 2023-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9999410

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9999410, Brain Tumor SPORE Grant (5P50CA097257-18). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9999410. Licensed CC0.

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