Seven cancer research trainees and junior faculty are this year’s recipients of Cancer Innovation Pilot Grants, the University of Colorado Cancer Center’s Cancer Research Training and Education Coordination (CRTEC) program announced recently.
The grant program provides $10,000 in research funding per recipient to support the career development of pre- and post-doctoral trainees and early-career faculty. The pilot grants are awarded through a competitive peer-review evaluation process similar to National Institutes of Health grants. Each recipient is mentored by a CU Cancer Center member.
Eduardo Davila, PhD, the cancer center’s associate director for CRTEC, says the pilot grants “are intended to help the recipients with a high-risk, high-reward project, and we ask whatever project they propose, that this contributes to a grant, a manuscript, or a presentation. It’s intended that this endeavor helps guide the recipients through the process of preparing an NIH-style grant.”
This year saw a record number of applications for the grants. CRTEC partnered with the CU Cancer Center’s offices of Community Outreach & Engagement (COE) and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Access (DEIA) as well as its Tumor Host Interactions (THI) Program to sponsor two additional awards, up from last year’s five.
Sponsoring pioneering research
“The primary goal of the Cancer Innovation Pilot Grants is to support the career development of CU Cancer Center trainees and junior faculty by providing funds to support innovative research projects that open new avenues of research,” said Davila and Adela Cota-Gomez, PhD, the cancer center’s assistant director for education administration, in a joint statement. “This addresses the CRTEC vision and mission twofold: First, by fostering the education and training of the next generation of cancer scientists, and secondly, by sponsoring pioneering research that could lead to inventive advances in cancer treatment.”
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So far, the pilot grant program has delivered “impressive results with a several-fold return on investment and dissemination of the research findings via national, regional, and local presentations and publications,” Davila and Cota-Gomez said.
Here are this year’s Cancer Innovation Pilot Grant recipients, their CU Cancer Center mentors, and the titles of their projects:
Awardee: Joselyn Cruz Cruz, PhD
Mentor: Michael Verneris, MD
Project Title: Improving the Homing of CAR-T Cells within the Pediatric Sarcoma Tumor Microenvironment
Awardee: Kellen Gil, MD
Mentor: María Amaya, MD, PhD
Project Title: The Role of VDAC1 in Energy Metabolism and Apoptosis in Leukemia Stem Cells
Awardee: Irene Liang, BS
Mentor: Jamie Studts, PhD
Project Title: Perspectives on Lung Cancer Screening in the Sexual and Gender Minority Community
(Award co-sponsored by COE and DEIA)
Awardee: Johannes Menzel, PhD
Mentor: James DeGregori, PhD
Project Title: Understanding Myeloid Differentiation Associated Autophagy and Therapeutic Resistance in AML
(Award co-sponsored by CRTEC and THI)
Awardee: Varuna Nangia, BS
Mentor: Sabrina Spencer, PhD
Project Title: Investigating Rapid Drug Adaptation to MAPKi in Melanoma
Awardee: Joseph Sottnik, PhD
Mentor: Matthew Sikora, PhD
Project Title: Development and Characterization of Spontaneous ER+ Bone Metastasis Models of Invasive Lobular Carcinoma
Awardee: Rachel Steinmetz, BS
Mentor: Traci Lyons, PhD
Project Title: Investigating the Potential to Overcome Fulvestrant Resistance in ER+ Breast Cancer Using Anti-Semaphorin 7a Treatment
Photos at top: This year's recipients of Cancer Innovation Pilot Grants. Top row, left to right: Joselyn Cruz Cruz, PhD; Kellen Gil, MD; Irene Liang, BS; Johannes Menzel, PhD. Bottom row, left to right: Varuna Nangia, BS; Joseph Sottnik, PhD; Rachel Steinmetz, BS.
