Three researchers have won CancerLinQ Discovery Research Support Grants from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and two researchers have received a National Institutes of Health R21 grant.
Dr. Igor Astasturov
Igor Astsaturov, MD, PhD, and Edna Cukierman, PhD, both of Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, won the R21 grant. The pair will receive $432,410 over 2 years for their research on pancreatic cancer.
With their work, Dr. Astsaturov and Dr. Cukierman are “hoping to describe the structural and functional nature of cell-cell contact, or oncogenic synapses, associated with cancer-associated fibroblasts and pancreatic cells,” according to Fox Chase.
Dr. Edna Cukierman
Three other researchers have won ASCO’s CancerLinQ Discovery Research Support Grants. The recipients will conduct projects using CancerLinQ, which collects and analyzes real-world data from cancer patients at practices across the United States.
Each 1-year grant covers the cost of a CancerLinQ Discovery data set and a meeting at ASCO headquarters. The grants also contribute to personnel and/or research expenses. The grants are funded by the ASCO Foundation’s Mission Endowment of Conquer Cancer.
Dr. Sadiq Rehmani
With his CancerLinQ Discovery grant, Sadiq Rehmani, MD, of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, will study immunotherapy in older lung cancer patients with comorbidities.
Grant recipient Yasmin Karimi, MD, of Stanford (Calif.) University, will study how osteoclast inhibitors affect skeletal-related events and mortality in “real-world” patients with metastatic breast cancer and bone metastasis.
Dr. Vinayak Muralidhar
Grant recipient Vinayak Muralidhar, MD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the radiation oncology program at Harvard Medical School, Boston, will study the use of androgen-deprivation therapy and hypofractionation in prostate cancer.
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