Cancer researchers receive NIH Director’s New Innovator Award

Several oncology researchers received the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award.

The $1.5 million awards, established in 2007, support early-career investigators who propose innovative, high-impact research projects. Honorees are within a decade of their final degree or clinical residency and have not received a research project grant or equivalent NIH grant.

Genetic researcher Adobe — *Source: Adobe Stock.*

Recipients who proposed cancer-related research projects are:

Mekhail Anwar, MD, PhD, associate professor in the department of radiation oncology at University of California, San Francisco. Anwar’s project title is “Implantable nanophotonic sensors for in vivo immunoresponse.” His laboratory focuses on developing integrated circuits for in vivo cancer sensing.
Michael E. Birnbaum, PhD, of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. Birnbaum’s project title is “Repertoire-scale T-cell antigen identification via peptide-MHC lentivirus display.” Birnbaum’s lab develops tools to better understand and manipulate T-cell responses to cancer, infectious disease and autoimmunity in hopes of contributing to the development of the next generation of immunotherapies.
Subhamoy Dasgupta, PhD, assistant professor in the department of cell stress biology at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. Dasgupta’s project title is “Decoding the nuclear metabolic processes regulating gene transcription.” Dasgupta’s lab strives to define the interplay between cellular metabolism and gene transcription that reprograms cancer into an aggressive metastatic disease.
Joan Font-Burgada, PhD, assistant professor in the cancer biology program at Fox Chase Cancer Center. Font-Burgada’s project title is “New tools for understanding metastasis through tissue resident cells: Enabling an extensive medicine strategy for metastatic disease.” His lab studies various converging forces during tumor initiation, including metastatic invasion, immune surveillance and oncogenic selection.
Siddhartha Jaiswal, MD, PhD, investigator in the department of pathology at Stanford University. Jaiswal’s project is titled “Clonal hematopoiesis in human aging and disease.” His lab focuses on understanding the biology of the aging hematopoietic system and how mutations contribute to the development of cancer and other age-related diseases.
Benjamin M. Larimer, PhD, assistant professor in the department of radiology and associate scientist with O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center at The University of Alabama at Birmingham. Larimer’s project title is “Site-specific immune cell activation detection for improving individualized cancer immunotherapy.” His lab focuses on the development and utilization of clinically translatable noninvasive imaging agents that can be used to visualize tumor and immune cell biology.
Eunjung “Alice” Lee, PhD, assistant professor in the division of genetics and genomics at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, as well as associate member of Broad Institute. Lee’s project title is “Mechanism for endogenous retroelements to mimic ancient exogenous identities in aging and diseased human tissue.” Her research program focuses on the role of transposable elements and somatic mutations in various human conditions.
Miles A. Miller, PhD, assistant professor in the department of radiology at Harvard Medical School and principal investigator in the Center for Systems Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital. Miller’s project title is “Dissection of in situ myeloid signaling using image-guided synthetic control.” His lab focuses on mechanisms of spatial dynamics in mammalian tissue, with a particular emphasis on cancer and inflammation.
Thomas Norman, PhD, assistant member in the computational and systems biology program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Norman’s project title is “Predictive engineering of cellular transcriptional state.” His lab focuses on experimental studies of the global structure of genetic interactions in tumorigenesis, creation of new computational methods for designing and interpreting large single-cell experiments, and technological approaches for studying cell-cell interactions.
Katharine A. White, PhD, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry at University of Notre Dame and member of Harper Cancer Research Institute. White’s project title is “Roles for increased intracellular pH and heterogeneity in cancer.” Her lab strives to understand how cellular pH dynamics regulate proteins, pathways and cell behaviors, as well as to learn about the molecular mechanisms that drive cancer cell behavior, heterogeneity and response to therapy.

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Cancer researchers receive NIH Director’s New Innovator Award

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