ATA research grants cover diverse projects

The American Thyroid Association recently issued seven grants to researchers, according to an association press release.

The group issues its own grants and also confers grants on behalf of funding from Bite Me Cancer, a thyroid cancer patient support group, and the Thyroid Cancer Survivors Association, Inc. (ThyCa).

"The ATA research grant program has been supporting young scientists in various thyroid-related research areas, including clinical, translational and basic areas, over many years,” Motoyasu Saji, MD, PhD, chair of the ATA Research Committee, said in the release. “Every year we receive more than 50 grant applications from various countries around the world. We are excited to see young thyroid researchers, who attack current clinical problems and basic scientific questions using state of art technologies, new ideas and new views.”

The 2016 ATA research grants will be awarded to the following investigators:

Liora Katz, PhD, Ichan School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, whose research will focus on beta cells;

Connie Rhee, MD, University of California, Irvine, whose work will focus on chronic kidney disease;

Kristen Vella, PhD, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts, whose project will focus on neurons that active thyroid hormone clearance in the liver; and

David Sharlin , PhD, Minnesota State University, whose project will look at developmental hypothyroidism.

The 2016 ATA ThyCa grants will be awarded to the following recipients:

Viswanath Gunda , PhD, Massachusetts General Hospital, whose work will focus on combination therapies to treat thyroid cancer, and

Nikita Pozdeyev , MD, PhD, University of Colorado School of Medicine, whose research will also focus on combination therapy.

The 2016 ATA Bite Me Cancer grant will be awarded to a single researcher:

Irene Min, MD, Weill Cornell Medical College New York, whose work will focus on immunotherapy in thyroid cancer.