American Cancer Society awards research, training grants

Issue: May 25, 2020

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The American Cancer Society approved $36.1 million in funding for 79 research and training grants.

The grants — 73 of which are new, and six of which are renewals — will fund investigators at 59 institutions across the United States. They take effect Sept. 1.

The society highlighted a few grant recipients:

• Matthew J. Sikora, PhD, of University of Colorado, Denver, and colleagues will work to identify strategies and potential drugs to undermine estrogen receptor activity in invasive lobular carcinoma. Their work targets the MDC1 protein.
• Haiying Cheng, MD, PhD, of Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and colleagues will focus on how the RICTOR gene may contribute to the spread and survival of cancer cells in distant metastatic sites in metastatic lung cancer.
• Ankur Nagaraja, MD, PhD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and colleagues hope to gain a better understanding of how a normal stomach or esophagus cell transforms into stomach or esophageal cancer. Their goal is to use these insights to develop more effective therapies for gastroesophageal cancers.
• Cassandra E. Callmann, PhD, of Northwestern University, and colleagues hope to use nanotechnology to accelerate the development of a vaccine for triple-negative breast cancer.
• Alejandra H. de Mendoza, PhD, of Georgetown University, will investigate whether a culturally targeted video can help increase genetic testing and counseling among Latina women, who have twice the risk for BRCA mutations than the general population.
• Carolyn S. Harris, BSN, of University of California, San Francisco, will investigate whether changes in three genes are associated with two common symptom clusters among patients with cancer and cancer survivors. This research could lead to new interventions to prevent or treat the symptoms.

American Cancer Society’s extramural research program — which supports research and training at more than 200 institutions — has invested more than $4.9 billion since 1946. The program primarily funds early career investigators.