May 27, 2009, New York, NY / Los Angeles, CA: Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C), the charitable initiative supporting groundbreaking research aimed at getting new cancer treatments to patients in an accelerated timeframe, has reached a significant milestone, awarding the first round of three-year grants – that total $73.6 million -- to five multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional research Dream Teams. The majority of these funds were raised in connection with an SU2C telecast on September 5, 2008 that aired simultaneously on the ABC, CBS and NBC networks. Today's announcement comes on the one-year anniversary of the launch of Stand Up To Cancer. SU2C's next round of funding – Innovative Research Grants for individual investigators – will be announced later this year.

"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 Nobel Laureate Phillip A. Sharp, Ph.D., Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and David H. Koch Institute at MIT. Sharp chairs the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) assembled by SU2C's scientific partner, the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), that reviewed Dream Team applications and made recommendations on funding to SU2C's Management 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."

Five SU2C Dream Team Grants

Each Dream Team's project, funded for three years pending satisfactory achievement of stated milestones, is "translational" in nature, geared toward moving science from "bench to bedside" where it can benefit patients as quickly as possible. SU2C's distinctive funding model was specifically designed to eliminate barriers that can inhibit creativity and collaboration, in part, by enabling scientists with different expertise from different institutions across the country – and in some cases, internationally – to work together. The five Dream Teams are comprised of 7 leaders, 4 co-leaders and 27 principal researchers from over 20 leading institutions, with more than 300 individuals participating in total. Each team will have at least two members from patient advocacy groups to ensure that the perspective of the patients and survivors they represent will be integrated into the research on an ongoing basis.

The teams are listed below in alphabetical order according to the name of the leaders, and they will pursue the following important topics (full list of team members ATTACHED):