BREWER – The Maine Institute for Human Genetics and Health has announced that collaborations with founding partners The Jackson Laboratory, the University of Maine and Eastern Maine Medical Center are well under way. Among the first priorities of the new research center is a comprehensive cancer research program, the first of its kind in central, eastern and northern Maine.

“We want to determine why rural areas of Maine have such a high incidence of cancer,” institute director Janet Hock said in a prepared statement released Monday. “These past few months, we worked intensively with collaborators throughout Maine to create a strong research program to support our 10-year mission to reduce the risk of cancer in rural regions.”

The ultimate goal of the research program is to deliver the latest developments in clinical care to cancer patients in rural communities, using scientists’ expanding understanding of ways in which genes interact with the environment to change the risk of cancer, Hock said.

Hock credited 2nd District U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud for his role in obtaining more than $3.1 million in research grants from the U.S. Department of Defense. The grants have made it possible to develop two “technology cores” at the Maine Institute of Human Genetics and Health, she said.

The first is a collaboration among the institute, Dahl-Chase Pathology Associates, EMMC’s CancerCare of Maine and the hospital’s cancer registry to create the Maine CancerCare Tissue Repository. The program will store tumor tissue that normally would be disposed of when a cancer is surgically removed; the tissue can then be studied by cancer researchers. The second technology core is the creation of the Maine Geographic Information System, or MeGIS, a cancer-related mapping project directed by scientists at UM and The Jackson Laboratory in collaboration with state’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Maine Cancer Registry.

The Maine Institute for Human Genetics and Health also includes three startup cancer research projects in the following areas: reducing the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder in siblings of cancer patients; investigating potential “biomarkers” that appear when lung cancer spreads to bone; and understanding why knocking out a DNA repair gene leads to certain cancers in mice.

Researcher Barbara Knowles, vice president for training, education and external collaborations at The Jackson Laboratory said, “We are very excited to see the new cancer program take shape and look forward to continuing to work in closer collaboration with the institute.”