OCRI Researchers Form Pre-ARC

The Oral Cancer Research Initiative was invited by Dr. Katya Ravid, Director of the Evans Center for Interdisciplinary Biomedical Research, to form a pre-ARC. Pre-ARCs serve as an intermediate phase of exploration of research themes before becoming a formal ARC (Affinity Research Collaborative). The pre-ARC is titled Etiology and Pathogenesis of Oral Cancer (EPOC) and the Directors are Maria Kukuruzinska, Avi Spira and Maria Trojanowska.

The EPOC pre-ARC is a multidisciplinary collaboration involving a subset of OCRI researchers. As such, EPOC meets the major goal of the ARC program of “…focusing on a research theme, explored with the aid of different disciplines and technologies to advance Research and Discovery as it applies to disease states…” The group, which includes basic scientists, clinical oncologists and surgeons, public health researchers, computational biologists and bioengineers, meets at noon on the first Monday of the month in the Molecular and Cell Biology Conference Room on Evans 4.

The OCRI team will apply for full ARC status in November 2013, at which point seed funding may be available to support collaborations and further project development. The long term goal is to prepare a competitive application for SPORE (Specialized Program for Research Excellence) funding from NCI/NIDCR to enhance research infrastructure on oral cancer at Boston University.

Visit EPOC Pre-ARC for more information.