Press Releases

ATLANTA, Might 23, 2024 – The American Most cancers Society (ACS), the most important non-government, non-profit funding supply of most cancers analysis in america, has accepted funding for $28 million in new Extramural Discovery Science (EDS) analysis and profession improvement grants. The awards will fund investigators at establishments throughout america beginning in July 2024.

“We’re very proud to announce these new grant awardees and their critically necessary analysis tasks,” mentioned Dr. Christina Annunziata, senior vice chairman, extramural discovery science on the American Most cancers Society. “These scientists have devoted their lives to rising our understanding of higher methods to deal with and survive most cancers and we look ahead to partnering with them in our collective mission to assist save lives.” 

ACS seeks to enhance the lives of most cancers sufferers, households, and caregivers by way of analysis, affected person providers, and advocacy. These awards require elementary, preclinical, medical, inhabitants, and implementation/dissemination analysis in addition to multidisciplinary crew science to sort out the complexities of cancers and most cancers care.

“We’re excited these grants will fund a variety of modern analysis throughout completely different most cancers varieties,” mentioned Dr. William Dahut, chief scientific officer on the American Most cancers Society. “These research embrace intervention approaches, and analysis methodologies that spotlight primary molecular analysis, immunotherapy, preclinical and medical trials, potential cohort research, and even AI and computational machine studying.”   

Throughout this grant interval, there are two new recipients of the ACS Professor Award and two new recipients of the ACS IMPACT Professorship Award. These are extremely prestigious awards for investigators who’ve made seminal contributions in most cancers analysis. The award additionally acknowledges distinctive monitor information in management, service, and mentoring in most cancers analysis. The ACS IMPACT Professor Award was created to assist advise ACS in efforts to deal with the general public well being burden of prostate most cancers by way of ACS’ IMPACT initiative – Improving Mortality from Prostate Cancer Together.

ACS Professors

Shuji Ogino, M.D., Ph.D., M.S. 

ACS-HKH-Scientific Analysis Professorship  

Brigham and Girls’s Hospital, Inc.  

Undertaking Title: “Integrative Transdisciplinary Examine of Early-Onset Colorectal Most cancers” 

This research will deal with illuminating the contributing elements to the not too long ago noticed rise in early-onset colorectal most cancers. By combining strategies from a number of scientific fields, together with epidemiology, cell biology, molecular pathology, spatial microscopy, and computational machine-learning, Ogino will conduct analysis to achieve perception into how genetic, dietary, way of life, and different elements affect the event of early-onset colorectal most cancers. Linking potential danger elements with particular tumor genomic, microbial, or immune options will make clear the underlying causes of early-onset colorectal most cancers, informing future precision prevention and remedy methods.   

Ann Partridge, M.D., M.P.H.  

ACS Scientific Analysis Professor  

Dana-Farber Most cancers Institute 

Undertaking Title: “Scientific Analysis Professor”  

Partridge is a well-established medical oncologist and chief in conducting medical analysis to grasp and enhance the remedy and care of individuals with most cancers with a selected deal with adolescents and younger adults with breast most cancers who usually tend to endure bodily and emotionally after prognosis than older folks. Via this new research, Partridge goals to increase her work to further adolescent and younger grownup most cancers affected person populations, by increasing the proof base to tell care and interventions to enhance remedy outcomes and help high quality of life throughout the broader adolescent and younger grownup most cancers inhabitants; disseminating interventions past educational facilities, to numerous group oncology practices; and making a workforce of investigators who will proceed this work to learn adolescent and younger adults with most cancers within the years to come back.

IMPACT Professorships

Daniel George, M.D. 

ACS IMPACT Professorship in Prostate Most cancers 

Duke College College of Medication  

Undertaking Title: “Race-based cohort trials to enhance outcomes for Black males”

Dr. George is a medical oncologist centered on genitourinary cancers, who has labored extensively in new drug improvement for prostate sufferers, notably prognostic and predictive biomarker improvement.  His analysis program centered on most cancers disparities, and particularly Black males with prostate most cancers. He has developed a powerful interdisciplinary crew of collaborators permitting his work to incorporate actual world proof information for not too long ago accepted therapies, implementation science, prostate most cancers screening algorithms to enhance fairness in early detection and testing new remedy mixture remedy using pragmatic trial designs. Via his work with IMPACT, he’ll proceed to analyze necessary variations in affected person and supplier experiences amongst males with prostate most cancers, notably for sufferers from underserved populations.   

Christopher Haiman, Sc.D.  

ACS IMPACT Professorship in Prostate Most cancers

College of Southern California (USC) 

Undertaking Title: “ACS IMPACT Analysis Professorship in Prostate Most cancers”   

Dr. Haiman is a genetic epidemiologist at USC, who has spent over twenty years elucidating the etiology of prostate most cancers, with a specific emphasis in males of African ancestry, resulting in the invention of >450 danger loci for prostate most cancers, novel genes harboring pathogenic variants that predict aggressive illness and a trans-ancestry polygenic danger rating that has considerably superior our understanding of personalised danger prediction for prostate most cancers throughout numerous populations. As a part of his involvement with IMPACT, Dr. Haiman will develop novel biomarkers to higher perceive the etiology of aggressive illness, in addition to to develop and clinically consider a risk-based screening method to enhance early detection. These sources will function a powerful basis for interdisciplinary coaching of the subsequent technology of most cancers well being disparity researchers, with a selected deal with minority researchers from communities at excessive danger of prostate most cancers who’ve historically been underrepresented in public well being analysis.

ACS can be proud to announce two recipients of Mission Increase Stage II grants. The grants are designed to help present and previous ACS grantees working to translate their preliminary primary analysis into human testing by funding modern high-risk/high-reward tasks.

Mission Increase Stage II Grants

Eben Rosenthal, M.D.  

Vanderbilt College Medical Middle 

Mission Increase Stage II Grantee 

Undertaking Title: “Minimally Invasive Lymph Node Staging in Head and Neck Most cancers”  

Biopsy of the lymph nodes is a essential step in understanding the staging of most cancers and figuring out the next remedy journey for a affected person. Nonetheless, there was little development within the surgical methods used for this course of over the previous three many years. Whereas sufferers with accessible tumors, comparable to breast most cancers, melanoma, and pores and skin most cancers are capable of be staged through a much less invasive sentinel lymph node biopsy, most most cancers staging requires a extremely invasive process to take away of the lymph nodes. Rosenthal’s analysis focuses on growing a novel method that makes use of the intravenous injection of a tracer agent to stage a a lot wider vary of tumor varieties. Rosenthal’s Stage II Mission Increase Grant will decide the medical utility of this method in sufferers with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma in comparison with the present customary of care by way of a medical trial with a further 24 contributors, constructing on the profitable security and proof of idea work with six preliminary contributors funded by way of the previous Stage I Mission Increase Grant.

Rosenthal was the earlier recipient of a Analysis Scholar Grant from 2006-2010 and a Stage I Mission Increase Grant from 2021-2023.

Lei Xu, M.D., Ph.D.  

Massachusetts Basic Hospital 

Mission Increase Stage II Grantee

Undertaking Title: “Reprogramming the Tumor Microenvironment to Improve Immunotherapy”  

Whereas immunotherapy approaches have revolutionized remedy for a number of types of most cancers, these remedies have solely had restricted effectiveness in superior ovarian most cancers, creating an pressing want for brand spanking new approaches to stimulate the physique’s immune system to struggle most cancers and improve the efficacy of immunotherapy. Xu’s analysis has demonstrated that ovarian most cancers sufferers handled with losartan, a medicine used to regulate hypertension, lived 30 months longer on common in comparison with those that didn’t obtain the remedy. This work was expanded by way of a Mission Increase Stage I grant, which discovered that the mix of losartan with immunotherapy is more practical in decreasing tumor dimension and fluid accumulation within the stomach of ovarian most cancers mouse fashions in comparison with utilizing immunotherapy alone. Via this Mission Increase Stage II grant, Xu will collaborate with the Gynecological Oncology crew at Massachusetts Basic Hospital to conduct a potential part II medical trial of losartan remedy in human sufferers with ovarian most cancers, which can present the protection and response information wanted to maneuver ahead with a bigger trial of losartan, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy. 

Xu was the earlier recipient of a Analysis Scholar Grant from 2012-2017 and a Stage I Mission Increase Grant from 2022-2023.

Different analysis award highlights embrace:

Biochemistry and Immunology of Most cancers Analysis Program Grants

Silvia Guglietta, Ph.D. 

Medical College of South Carolina 

Analysis Scholar Grant

Undertaking Title: “Focusing on Complement Anaphylatoxin C3a Receptor to Break Immunotherapy Resistance in Colorectal Most cancers”

Responsiveness to immunotherapy in colorectal most cancers (CRC) is restricted to simply 5% of sufferers with metastatic illness, who develop immunologically “scorching” tumors with excessive immune cell content material that may be exploited for immunotherapy. This mission will research a proposed method for switching immunologically ‘chilly’ tumors to ‘scorching’ by way of the switch of microbial flora and the next response to immunotherapy. The findings from this work might reveal a novel druggable pathway that might considerably improve the variety of sufferers with CRC who may benefit from immunotherapy.

Zhijie ‘Jason’ Liu, Ph.D. 

UT Well being San Antonio 

Analysis Scholar Grant

Undertaking Title: “Enhancer Mechanisms and Interventions in Breast Most cancers Endocrine Resistance”

This research will sort out one of the urgent challenges for breast most cancers sufferers by working to spotlight the underlying mechanisms of endocrine remedy resistance which impacts greater than 30% of all invasive breast most cancers sufferers. This analysis will establish the molecular mechanisms by which oncogenic transcription elements regulate breast most cancers development and invasive development to remedy resistance in preclinical fashions.

Cell Biology and Preclinical Most cancers Analysis Program Grants

Pavithra Viswanath, Ph.D. 

The Regents of the College of California, San Francisco 

Analysis Scholar Grant

Undertaking Title: “Growing a Novel Tracer for Imaging Oncometabolic Exercise in Most cancers”

Not like many cancers, acquiring biopsies repeatedly from glioma sufferers isn’t fascinating due to the problems of repeated mind surgical procedure. Because of this, administration of glioma sufferers is closely depending on non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) strategies. Nonetheless, the presence and illness development of the IDHmut class of gliomas are notably troublesome to visualise by MRI. This research will validate the power of a novel technique of imaging to visualise metabolically energetic tumor tissue and report on remedy response at early timepoints within the absence of anatomical alterations in a preclinical mannequin of IDHmut glioma.

Marta Overchuk, Ph.D. 

The College of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 

Postdoctoral Fellowship Grant

Undertaking Title: “Exploiting the Potential of Photochemically-induced Ferroptosis to De-Escalate Platinum Dose in Metastatic Ovarian Most cancers”

Photodynamic remedy (PDT) is a robust modality that makes use of mild and non-toxic light-sensitive molecules to generate reactive oxygen species that may kill most cancers cells with precision by way of the induction of another cell-killing mechanism known as ferroptosis, even in cells which can be immune to chemotherapy. In sufferers with metastatic ovarian most cancers, PDT may be carried out safely utilizing lasers and fiber optics after surgical procedure to focus on remaining tumor cells. This research seeks to enhance our understanding of PDT-induced ferroptosis with the overarching goal to tell the long run improvement of therapeutic PDT brokers which can be particularly tailor-made to induce this course of.

Scientific and Most cancers Management Analysis Program Grants

Jennifer McQuade, M.D. 

College of Texas, MD Anderson

Analysis Scholar Grant

Undertaking Title: “Neoadjuvant ipilimumab/nivolumab + Microbiota-Directed Prebiotic Dietary Intervention to Optimize Immune Response in Melanoma”

This research will construct on earlier analysis demonstrating that most cancers sufferers who’re already consuming a weight loss plan wealthy in fiber from prebiotic meals previous to beginning immunotherapy have improved responses to remedy by inspecting whether or not newly adopting a prebiotic food-enriched weight loss plan on the time of remedy has the identical enhancing impact. As much as 35 sufferers might be enrolled on this 14-week trial that may evaluate the intestine microbiome and tumor response to immunotherapy between these adopting the brand new weight loss plan and people sustaining their regular weight loss plan.

Manisha Bahl, M.D., M.P.H. 

Massachusetts Basic Hospital 

Analysis Scholar Grant

Undertaking Title: “Unlocking the Black Field: Explainable Synthetic Intelligence for Breast Most cancers Danger Prediction”

This modern mission goals to make use of synthetic intelligence (AI) incorporating each mammographic imaging and medical information to develop and consider prognostic instruments for ladies identified with high-risk breast lesions to information knowledgeable decision-making about surgical excision, imaging surveillance, and chemoprevention. If profitable, this analysis may in the end scale back the pointless uncomfortable side effects and prices related to the overtreatment of high-risk breast lesions.

The ACS Extramural Discovery Science program at the moment helps greater than 700 analysis grants throughout the most cancers continuum at greater than 200 establishments. With an funding of greater than 5 billion {dollars} since 1946, ACS has funded 50 researchers who’ve gone on to be awarded the Nobel Prize. ACS funds many early profession investigators, giving the most effective and the brightest an opportunity to discover cutting-edge concepts at a time when they may not discover funding elsewhere.

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In regards to the American Most cancers Society

The American Most cancers Society is a number one cancer-fighting group with a imaginative and prescient to finish most cancers as we all know it, for everybody. For greater than 110 years, now we have been bettering the lives of individuals with most cancers and their households as the one group combating most cancers by way of advocacy, analysis, and affected person help. We’re dedicated to making sure everybody has a possibility to forestall, detect, deal with, and survive most cancers. To be taught extra, go to most cancers.org or name our 24/7 helpline at 1-800-227-2345. Join with us on Fb, X, and Instagram.