The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has received a USD 2.7 million National Cancer Institute P01 Program Project Grant to advance a coordinated research program targeting anaplastic thyroid cancer (ATC), a rare and highly aggressive malignancy with a historical median overall survival of around three to five months.
The ImpACT program, led by Stephen Y. Lai and Marie-Claude Hofmann, combines four projects investigating treatment resistance, cellular immunotherapy, metabolic imaging, and tumor evolution, supported by shared research cores. The work builds on a multidisciplinary ATC research program previously led by Lai and Hofmann at MD Anderson from 2018 to 2021.
One arm will investigate signaling pathways and biomarkers associated with resistance to BRAF/MEK inhibition. Dabrafenib (Tafinlar) plus trametinib (Mekinist) is approved by the US FDA for patients with unresectable or metastatic BRAF V600E-mutant ATC, but acquired resistance remains an important limitation. A second project will develop peptide-specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes by identifying immunogenic T cell receptor targets.
The remaining projects focus on treatment monitoring and tumor evolution. One will evaluate hyperpolarized [1-¹³C]-pyruvate MRI as a minimally invasive method for detecting metabolic responses to treatment, while another will integrate multi-omic datasets to characterize cellular plasticity and changes that emerge as ATC progresses or becomes treatment resistant.