Decisions on which grants to fund are a combination of the ratings of the proposal itself, an evaluation of the probability that the team will carry through, and the value of the results to the VHL Family Alliance community. While many of the applications submitted proposals which were “good science,” the Board and its advisors chose the one they felt has the greatest potential in leading to better therapies for VHL.

The Board approved a two-year grant to Dr. Judith Frydman of Stanford University for her study “Cellular Pathways leading to degradation of tumor-causing variants of the VHL protein.”

As part of the body’s self-repair mechanism, there are checks that ensure that each step in the process of cell division and replication is going right. If not, a process of “degradation” gets rid of the incorrect cells so that the process will succeed. Seen from this perspective, a tumor is caused by a failure of this quality-control process.

Dr. Frydman theorizes that instead of using a drug to work specifically on the VHL gene, we might use a drug to bolster this quality-control process and let the body take care of the problem normally — eliminating the cells that lose that second copy of the VHL gene.

We are excited at the prospects this project presents, and wish Dr. Frydman and her team all the best for the successful completion of this project.

As printed in the VHL Family Forum 12:3, November 2004. For permission to reprint, please contact VHL Family Alliance, editor@vhl.org. Further information is available from the VHL Family Alliance, info@vhl.org.