University of California
San Fransisco
NCIS Grant

NANETS congratulates NCIS recipient Katherine VanLoon, MD, MPH. She plans to use the robust database available from the NCCN’s multi-institutional Neuroendocrine Tumor Outcomes Project to report recurrence rates, time to tumor recurrence, and survival for patients with gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) who undergo surgical resection with curative intent.

Because NCCN guidelines for surveillance imaging following resection are vague and reflect lack of standardization, I will describe the surveillance practices of the member institutions for patients who undergo complete surg ical resection of gastroenteropancreatic NETs. This analysis will attempt to identify patient subgroups at particularly high risk of recurrence following surgical resection of gastroenteropancreatic NETs.

University of Cincinnati
School of Medicine
Young Investigator Grant

NANETS congratulates Hala Elnakat Thomas as the 2013 Young Investigator Grant Recipient for her work on mTOR inhibition in the treatment of pNETs.

Because the allosteric inhibitor of the mammalian Target Of Rapamycin (mTOR), everolimus (RAD001), has already shown efficacy in pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (pNETs), it is compelling to assess in this indication, the ability of the next-generation mTOR inhibitors to impede tumor progression. Toward this end, BEZ235 a dual phosphatidylinositide-3OH kinase (PI3K)/mTOR inhibitor is currently being evaluated as a single agent in a number of phase I/II clinical trials for treatment of patients with pNETs either prior to or after failure of allosteric mTOR inhibitors. Based on my previous work, I predict that a major benefit of treating pNETs with RAD001 in combination with BEZ235 will be a synergistic inhibition of mTOR at lower doses of each drug, which will increase specificity while decreasing toxicity. The preclinical data generated from this award will not only improve our molecular and mechanistic understanding of the drug combination but will more importantly potentially improve the clinical outcome for pNET patients treated with RAD001 and BEZ235 in combination in lieu of either drug as a single agent.