Intramural funding nears $350,000

CCRI recently funded nine projects, totaling nearly $350,000 in awards. The grants were distributed across three mechanisms:

Concept Award, CCRI’s launchpad for untested but potentially transformative ideas, providing up to $10,000. This mechanism invites researchers to take risks, explore bold hypotheses, and venture into new scientific territory- no preliminary data required, only a strong rationale and a novel concept of potentially high impact.

One grant was funded for this grant mechanism, PI: Dr. Raed Bahelah of the Department of Population Health Science, “A Feasibility Study of Lung Cancer Screening Through Quitline Referral”

Catalyst Award provides funding support of up to $30,000 to accelerate early-stage, high-impact cancer research. These awards are designed to help promising ideas gather the momentum needed to compete for future external funding. Three investigators in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology earned Catalyst Awards this year for their project, each of which represent a critical step toward expanding the boundaries of cancer biology:

Dr. Gunjan Sharma, “Dissecting the Role of Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor in Small Cell Lung Cancer Progression and Metastasis via Indoleamine 2,3-dioxyenase 1 and Kynurenin Pathway Metabolites”
Dr. Ramona Moles, “Reprogramming Monocytes in ATL: Single-Cell Insights into HTLV-1-Mediated Immune Dysregulation”
Dr. Kunwar Somesh Vikramdeo. “Investigating a novel class of biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis of ovarian cancer”

Collaborative Idea Development Award offers up to $60,000 in grant funding for early-stage, innovative, and team-based cancer research. This award encourages the formation of new interdisciplinary collaborations across basic, clinical, translational, and population sciences, with the goal of developing high-impact research ideas that address critical challenges in cancer biology, treatment, and prevention, leading to future extramural funding. Five teams received this award for their projects, which are focused on lung, pancreatic, prostate and ovarian cancers and T-cell lymphoma:

Project 1: Drs. Candace Howard-Claudio (Radiology), Rojymon Jacob (Radiation Oncology), and Pier Paolo Claudio (PI) (Pharmacology and Toxicology) - Clinical and Translational Research Collaboration, “Imaging-guided Oncolytic Viral Gene Therapy Enhancement of Radiation Therapy for Therapy-resistant Prostate Cancer”

Project 2: Drs. Keli Xu (PI) and Ajay Singh (Cell and Molecular Biology) - Basic and Translational Research Collaboration, “Novel Molecular Biomarkers for Diagnosis and Prognosis of Pancreatic Cancer”

Project 3: Drs. Ramona Moles (PI) and Drazen Raucher (Cell and Molecular Biology) - Basic and Translational Research Collaboration, “Longitudinal Profiling of Innate Immune Alteration in HTLV-1-Induced Leukemia”

Project 4: Drs. Seema Singh (PI) (Cell and Molecular Biology), Raed Bahelah (Population Health Science), and Ajay Singh (Cell and Molecular Biology) - Basic and Population Health Collaboration, “Smoking and Stress in Prostate Cancer: From Epidemiologic Risk to Biological Mechanisms”

Project 5: Drs. Jawed Siddiqui (PI) and Ajay Singh (Cell and Molecular Biology) - Basic and Translational Research Collaboration, “GDF15 mediated Osteokines in Pancreatic Cancer Cachexia”