The Hasan Program Project

WELCOME TO THE WEBSITE FOR THE
HASAN PROGRAM PROJECT

The Program Director is Professor Tayyaba Hasan, Ph.D. of the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Department of Dermatology of the Harvard Medical School, in Boston, Massachusetts.

This project is funded by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

News from PPG

Photodynamic Therapy (PDT)

PDT is an emerging modality in use for cancer and non-cancer therapeutics. PDT is a photochemistry-based treatment modality that has gained approval worldwide, including in the U.S. Based on the observation that certain non-toxic chemicals, called photosensitizers (PS), accumulate preferentially in malignant tissues, PDT involves delivering visible light of the appropriate wavelength to excite PS molecules to produce cytotoxic active molecular species. Two of the most notable advantages of PDT are the dual sources of selectivity inherent in the method and its effectiveness on radio- and chemotherapy resistant cells. The first level of selectivity comes from the somewhat preferential though modest accumulation of the PS in tumor tissues, and the second comes from the confinement of the volume of tissue that is exposed to light.

Introduction to Program Project Grant (PPG)

The overall goal of this PPG is to develop photodynamic therapy (PDT)-based combination treatments such that the molecular response of first modality of the combination primes the tumor for enhanced response to the second treatment in an approach we term Combination Photodynamic and Biologic Therapy (CPBT). The Program addresses three cancer types, pancreatic cancer (PanCa), biliary tract cancer (BTC), and non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC). For different reasons, these diseases are a major burden to society in terms of suffering and healthcare costs. If successful, studies from this Program will provide opportunities for clinical intervention using mechanism-based combinations of PDT and biological therapies. This approach focuses on identifying and understanding molecular responses to PDT or a pre-treatment, with the monitoring of relevant molecular markers to guide treatment options and track treatment progress.

The proposed Program will combine fundamentally applied science with well-planned clinical trials to advance cancer therapy in a highly integrated team approach. The sum of the Projects and Cores in this Program creates a network of researchers who will now be able to collaborate at a very high level, achieving major goals because they are catalyzed by the shared resources and facilitative structure of this Program. This Program will also provide basic strategy for the application of PDT in phase I/II clinical trials, and will establish fundamental guidelines for combining PDT with other therapies. Specific equipment required for therapy will be developed and configured for optimized treatment, including imaging tools to track treatment response.

This proposal, if successful, will provide treatments for use in combination with current and emerging disease management approaches, and not as a replacement for them.

Projects and Cores

Project 1: Small Molecule Enhancers of Photodynamic Therapy for Skin Cancer (Maytin).
Project 2: Clinical photodynamic therapy for pancreatic and biliary tract cancer (Pereira).
Project 3: Mechanism-Based Design of Combination Therapies for Pancreatic Cancer (Hasan).
Project 4: Image-Guided and Model-Based Optical Dosimetry Tools (Pogue).

Together with three Cores comprising:
Core A: Administration, Integration, Education, and Career Development.
Core B: Biological Models, Molecular Pathology, and Biostatistics.
Core C: In Vivo Imaging, Dosimetry and Technology Transfer.