Prostate Surgery Center

Safeway Inc. and the Prostate Cancer Foundation to Fund Landmark Prostate Cancer Research Collaboration

S.T.A.R Program Brings Together Researchers from North America’s
Leading Prostate Cancer Centers

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 /PRNewswire/ — Safeway Inc. and the Prostate
Cancer Foundation today announced they will collectively donate $6 million
to fund the S.T.A.R. Program (for Special Team Amplification of Research),
an innovative research initiative focused on exploring the role of targeted
heat in cancer therapy to treat prostate cancer, as well as other research
strategies.

The S.T.A.R. Program is being launched for the first phase of research
and development with a $3 million grant from the Safeway Foundation which
raised the funds from its customers with donations made at checkout. The
Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF) developed the collaborative research
partnership and matched the initial funds dollar-for-dollar, for a total $6
million commitment. PCF is the world’s largest philanthropic source of
support for prostate cancer research and has funded ten of the individual
scientists making up the S.T.A.R. North American team.

The program brings together an interdisciplinary team of investigators
from multiple prominent cancer research centers. The team consists of
investigators from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (program
lead and coordinator), the University of Michigan Cancer Center and the
University of British Columbia.

Additional expertise will be leveraged through the Prostate Cancer
Foundation from the University of Washington, and from M.D. Anderson Cancer
Center and Emory University. This unique program will bring expertise
throughout the cancer research and treatment communities to focus on a new
approach to prostate cancer treatment. “Similar to the program that Robert
Goddard put in place to make space flight a reality, everyone that has
input will be invited to the table to be part of the solution,” noted
Jonathan Simons, M.D., CEO and President of the Prostate Cancer Foundation.

“The S.T.A.R. Program is evidence of what can happen when you link the
fundraising power of a major company like Safeway with the research vision
of the Prostate Cancer Foundation,” emphasized Simons. “This program would
not have happened without Safeway and its long-standing commitment to
helping find a cure for prostate cancer. We are literally turning up the
heat on metastatic prostate cancer research.” Prostate cancer strikes more
than 218,000 men each year making it the most commonly diagnosed cancer in
men. It also is one of the most deadly cancers, with more than 27,000 men
dying each year from the disease, making it second only to lung cancer as a
leading cause of cancer deaths in men.

“Supporting this kind of innovative research has become a trademark of
the Prostate Cancer Foundation, and the principle reason Safeway developed
a relationship with the organization more than seven years ago,” said
Safeway Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Steve Burd. “We
are pleased and honored to be associated with the S.T.A.R. Program
initiative and what promises to be pioneering work by some of the world’s
top cancer researchers,” Mr. Burd said.

In another innovative effort, the S.T.A.R. Program will convene a
“think tank” of some 70 experts in different areas of oncology from across
the nation to explore the question of why current therapies cure some types
of cancer but not others. The learnings from this effort will give
direction to future research on prostate cancer and other types of common
solid tumors that are currently the most difficult to treat.

“We are grateful to the leadership of Safeway and the Prostate Cancer
Foundation for this special effort,” said Robert Getzenberg, Ph.D.,
Director of Research, Brady Urological Institute, Johns Hopkins. “This
unique approach and highly interactive team will develop these new concepts
and extend them from the laboratory through testing in clinical trials to
the patient setting,” Getzenberg said.

The theory that heat can be used to help kill cancer cells comes from
an observation and review of scientific evidence by cancer researchers at
Johns Hopkins that testicular cancer patients, like seven-time Tour de
France winner Lance Armstrong, have much higher rates of survival than
others with different kinds of advanced cancer. Testicular cancer begins in
the testes, which are a few degrees cooler than the rest of the body. The
structural machinery of cancer cells spreading outside the testes may be
altered by the higher body temperatures, making them more susceptible to
standard chemotherapy treatments than other cancer types.

While heat therapy is in limited experimental use, researchers believe
the key to an effective treatment may be selectively heating cancer cells,
which can also prevent damage in adjacent healthy tissues. The goal, note
S.T.A.R. team members, is to find out the best way to deliver heat directly
to cancer cells. To do so, some of the S.T.A.R. Program researchers will
investigate the use of nanoparticles that are attracted to specific
proteins carried by cancer cells. Once the nanoparticle locates this
specific protein, it can enter the cancer cell, heating it from the inside
out after exposure to a magnetic field. The S.T.A.R. Program team will look
at this and other mechanisms for targeted heat delivery systems to cancer
cells.

In addition to Dr. Getzenberg at Johns Hopkins, the research team for
the S.T.A.R. Program includes:

– Theodore L. DeWeese, M.D., Professor and Department Chairman of
Radiation Oncology and Molecular Radiation Sciences, Johns Hopkins
University School of Medicine (Baltimore)
– Donald Coffey, Ph.D., Professor of Urology, Oncology, Pathology,
Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School
of Medicine (Baltimore)
– Kenneth Pienta, M.D., Professor of Internal Medicine and Surgery,
and Director of the NCI Research Center in Prostate Cancer at the
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)
– Martin Gleave, M.D., Professor of Urology, Director of Clinical
and Translational Research, The Prostate Centre, University of
British Columbia (Vancouver)

About Safeway, Inc.
Safeway Inc. is one of the largest food and drug retailers in North
America. The company operates over 1,700 stores in the Western,
Southwestern, Rocky Mountain, and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States
and in western Canada. The Safeway Foundation has become a major source of
support to cancer research and treatment programs as well as to people with
disabilities and education programs. 2007 marked the seventh consecutive
year that Safeway has been raising awareness and funds for prostate cancer
research in partnership with the Prostate Cancer Foundation; during this
time, Safeway has raised nearly $29 million. http://www.safeway.com.

About the Prostate Cancer Foundation
The Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF) is the world’s largest
philanthropic source of support for prostate cancer research. Founded in
1993, the PCF has raised more than $300 million and provided funding for
prostate cancer research to more than 1,400 researchers at 100 institutions
worldwide. The PCF has a simple, yet urgent goal: to find better treatments
and a cure for recurrent prostate cancer.
http://www.prostatecancerfoundation.org.