American Cancer Society awards research grants to 133 investigators at 84 institutions nationwide

ATLANTA—April 14, 2008 – The American Cancer Society, the largest non-government, not-for-profit funding source of cancer research in the United States, has awarded 133 national research and training grants totaling more than $54 million in the second of two grant cycles for 2008. Of the grants, 118 are new and 15 are renewals of previous grants. All of the grants go into effect July 1, 2008.

“We are once again proud to be funding very promising new research into some key areas,” said Margaret K. Offermann, MD, PhD, American Cancer Society deputy national vice president for research. “Among our grants is what is thought to be the largest research grant to date on Merkel cell cancer, a very deadly and yet rarely studied form of skin cancer, as well as a grant to evaluate a new computer aided CT colonography method that eliminates the need for the bowel prep prior to evaluation. Bowel prep has been identified as a major barrier to colon cancer screening, and this approach might dramatically increase compliance with American Cancer Society screening guidelines.”

The American Cancer Society’s Research and Training Program has funded 42 Nobel Prize laureates since its inception in 1946, during which time it has invested over $3.2 billion in cancer research, much of that focusing on the work of promising new investigators. On April 1, 2008, the Society was funding 938 multi-year grants worth $458 million. Among the newly awarded grants approved for funding beginning July 1, 2008:

THREE NEW AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY CLINICAL RESEARCH PROFESSORS

• Ethan Dmitrovsky, MD, professor and director of pharmacology and toxicology at the Dartmouth Medical School in Lebanon, New Hampshire, will test the efficacy of attacking lung cancer by targeting a group of proteins known as cyclins. These cell cycle proteins are overexpressed in premalignant and malignant lung lesions in patients.
  
  

• James Ferrara, MD, director of the Combined Blood and Marrow Transplant Program at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor is investigating ways to make bone marrow transplant safer. He is looking for genetic biomarkers that will identify patients most likely to develop graft-vs-host disease.