The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas approved over $90 million in new cancer research and prevention grants at its quarterly meeting near the Texas Capitol on Wednesday—and $20.6 million of that money is coming to North Texas.
Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center received 10 different grants totaling $14.6 million to advance everything from breast cancer and lung cancer screening to “deep learning models” to facilitate T-cell receptor therapies. (See below for the full list of UTSW grant recipients.)
At UT Dallas, a single grant of $6 million was awarded. According to the Dallas Morning News, that $6M will go toward recruiting synthetic chemist Rudi Fasan from the University of Rochester in New York. Fasan previously worked with 2018 Nobel Prize winner Frances Arnold at Cal Tech.
“Fasan’s recruitment will contribute substantially to UT Dallas’ goal of advancing its Center of Excellence in Reaction Discovery and High-Throughout Synthesis,” CPRIT Chief Scientific Officer Michelle Le Beau told the DMN. “And his natural-product-like libraries and molecular discovery platforms will provide key resources for the cancer community in Texas to support basic cancer research and the development of novel cancer therapeutics.”
$20.6M is just part of $90M awarded across Texas
The North Texas grants are just part of $90 million awarded by CPRIT this week for 40 projects from across Texas.
“Today’s grants are an illustration of how CPRIT is fulfilling the original promise made to Texans at our founding,” CPRIT CEO Wayne Roberts said in a statement. “From recruitment and prevention grants to boosting the development of cancer research in critical areas of Texas, today’s awards strengthen Texas’s position as a national leader in cancer research.”
In addition to the Dallas grantees, the funding will support a wide range of innovative research and prevention efforts at major research hubs in San Antonio and Houston, as well as in in rapidly developing cancer research programs in El Paso and the Rio Grande Valley.
UT Southwestern grant recipients
Here are the recipients at UT Southwestern who received grants from CPRIT this week:
Keith E. Argenbright $2,500,000
Community Expansion and Re-engagement for Breast Cancer Screening and Patient Navigation
David Gerber $1,922,312
Integrated lung cancer screening and tobacco cessation in an urban safety-net system
Mamta Jain $2,499,616
Screen, Treat, or Prevent (STOP) Hepatocellular Cancer-Hepatitis C (HCC-HCV): Expansion to All Adults
Lance S Terada $1,049,994
Autophagy and Tumor Endothelium
Rodney Infante $1,050,000
Changes in Tumor Microenvironment that Promote Cachexia
Zhenyu Zhong $1,049,997
Investigating the mechanism of NLRP3 inflammasome hyperactivation during hepatocellular carcinoma development
Guanghua Xiao $1,303,815
Integrate whole slide imaging and genomic data to study pediatric rhabdomyosarcoma
Samuel McBrayer $1,048,465
Development and evaluation of lanosterol synthase inhibitors in preclinical GBM models
Tao Wang $1,199,997
Developing knowledge guided deep learning models to predict the binding between T cell receptors and neoantigens for facilitating TCR-T therapies
Ram S Mani $1,049,641
Characterization of 3D Genome Organization and Transcriptional Regulation in Prostate Cancer
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