Stand Up to Cancer Initiative Awards $73.6 Million to Research Teams
Stand Up to Cancer Initiative Awards $73.6 Million to Research Teams
Stand Up to Cancer, an initiative of the Entertainment Industry Foundation, has announced grants totaling $73.6 million over three years to five multidisciplinary, multi-institutional research teams working to deliver new cancer treatments in an accelerated timeframe.
Administered by the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), the grants were awarded to "Dream Teams" of researchers from more than twenty institutions, including Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, and the Translational Genomics Research Institute. Grant funds will support, among other things, teams working on projects that shed new light on the molecular pathways and genetic mutations which contribute to the causes of many cancers, use nanotechnology to isolate and analyze circulating tumor cells, and explore imaging approaches that could lead to tumors being "starved" of their fuel.
Collectively, the research done through these projects has the potential to affect the diagnosis and treatment of a wide range of cancers in adults and children, including pancreatic, breast, ovarian, cervical, brain, uterine, lung, prostate, rectal, and colon cancer.
"Recent advancements in basic science and in technologies have placed us on the cusp of important discoveries that can revolutionize the fight against cancer," said Phillip A. Sharp, professor at the David H. Koch Institute at MIT and chair of the AACR Scientific Advisory Committee. "SU2C aims to capitalize on that progress and is pushing it forward at what will be an extraordinarily quick pace. The Dream Teams bring together leading laboratory scientists and physicians, collaborating in ways that are unprecedented with a laser-like focus on research that has enormous potential to help patients and save lives. The Stand Up to Cancer model could very well change the face of cancer."
To learn more about the research teams and their projects, visit the SU2C Web site.
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