Program Activities

The Hormone Related Malignancies Program organizes and supports its regularly scheduled functions as a means to foster and expand research collaborations between clinical and basic scientists, to recruit new investigators to the Program, and to help keep members up to date with cutting-edge research from outside investigators in the field.

Weekly Seminar Series 

Held every Wednesday from 11:00 – 12:00, the Hormone Related Malignancies Seminar Series alternates between speakers and topics of interest to each of the four focus groups. Bringing the focus groups together for a single research seminar series maximizes the interactions between basic scientists and clinicians, between disciplines and different but related disease interests.

Annual Minisymposium

Held in the Winter or Spring, the Minisymposium features four prominent invited speakers, both clinical and basic scientists, working on research problems in different cancers of the endocrine or reproductive tract system.

Featured Invited Seminar Speakers

At least four outside speakers that represent research interests of each focus groups will be invited each year to give plenary type seminars. Focus groups will select and invite the speakers and they will be scheduled in the regular weekly seminar time slot when possible. As in the past, funding for the minisymposium and outside speakers will be obtained from a combination of sources, including pharmaceutical firms and UCCC Core grant development funds.

Focus Group Meetings

Each focus group leader will meet at least semi-annually with members of their group and Dr. Holt, the program leader. The meetings serve to:

• Collect information from the group about research efforts
• Identify ongoing or potential new collaborations
• Give input about how the Cancer Center can meet the group's changing needs with respect to new Cores, recruitments, etc.
• Gather information pertinent to the Cancer Center Core Grant, such as Core lab use, updated grant support and publications
• Allow members to select and schedule seminar speakers
• Learn about research support services from Core directors and pass on member needs
• Inform members of seed grand opportunities and foster the development of multi-investigator grant applications

Weekly Clinical Breast and Prostate Conferences

We hold weekly clinical breast (Tuesday 8 to 9 am) and prostate (Wednesdays 8 to 9 am) conferences to review patients and clinical procedures among oncologists, radiologists, radiation oncologists, surgeons and pathologists. Clinical conferences are open to basic scientists as another means to facilitate and stimulate translational research.

Multi-investigator research grant applications

We support and facilitate the process of developing and submitting multi-investigator interaction research grant applications by targeting seed grants to groups of investigators to be used to generate the preliminary results for multi-investigator interactive grant applications, with preference for projects that involve interactions between physicians and basic scientists. We work with the Administrative Core to help assemble grant applications and provide an administrative home for grants.