Morehouse School of Medicine receives $25M grant to research cancer disparities
Cancer Research UK and NCI, through Cancer Grand Challenges, has awarded a 5-year, $25 million grant to Melissa B. Davis, PhD, and global team to address cancer disparities in populations of African descent.
Davis, director of the Morehouse School of Medicine Institute of Translational Genomic Medicine, is the first Cancer Grand Challenge awardee to focus on cancer inequities. She is leading an interdisciplinary research group — dubbed Team Societal, Ancestry, Molecular and Biological Analyses of Inequalities (SAMBAI) — from the U.S, U.K., Ghana and South Africa, according to a press release.
With the grant, Team SAMBAI will aim to develop a comprehensive database, including measurements of social, environmental, genetic and immunologic factors that cause and influence disparate cancer outcomes in underserved populations of African ancestry.
Team SAMBAI will additionally address the importance of patient partnership, advocacy and support in addressing cancer disparities, as well as focus on racial disparities in breast cancer, particularly among Black women.
“I want to extend my appreciation to Cancer Research UK, the National Cancer Institute, Cancer Grand Challenges, my Team SAMBAI colleagues around the world, and my Morehouse School of Medicine family on being selected one of five world-class global research teams to win this award,” Davis said in the release. “We are looking forward to engaging into what we hope will be groundbreaking research that will shift the paradigm for cancer inequity amongst people of African descent and hopefully help to save lives in the future.”
The award is the first to be led by an African American woman, the first to be awarded to a researcher at a Historically Black Medical School, and the first awarded to a host institution in Georgia, according to the release.
“Together with our network of visionary partners and research leaders, Cancer Grand Challenges unites the world’s brightest minds across boundaries and disciplines and aims to overcome cancer’s toughest problems,” David Scott, PhD, director of Cancer Grand Challenges, said in the release. “With this investment — our largest to date — we continue to grow our global research community, and fund new teams that have the potential to surface discoveries that could positively impact cancer outcomes.”
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