The AACR Grantee Summit 2026: Fueling Discovery and Fostering Connection

One of the ways the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) pursues its mission to prevent and cure cancer is by providing critical funding in support of cutting-edge research. To do so, AACR collaborates with scientific and funding partners to deliver prestigious grants to researchers domestically and internationally at every career stage.

A group of grantees gathered in Philadelphia on October 11-13 to showcase their research and connect with their peers and the AACR community at the third annual AACR Grantee Summit.

Welcoming the attendees, AACR Chief Executive Officer Margaret Foti, PhD, MD (hc), reinforced the commitment of AACR in supporting the career of the cancer workforce of the future. “The cutting-edge science we will hear in the next two days will reflect the extraordinary ingenuity of the scientific community that is working to overcome cancer, and that includes all of you,” Foti said, encouraging the grantees to never stop learning and, most importantly, never lose the joy of doing science.

Event cochair Manuel Hidalgo, MD, PhD, FAACR, professor at New York University Grossman School of Medicine, pointed out that the goal of the summit was to provide grantees with opportunities to network, interact, and learn from each other and from the speakers. “We hope that this will help in your career and also will foster collaborations down the road,” said Hidalgo, who is a current member of the AACR Board of Directors.

Several AACR leaders and senior investigators delivered inspirational talks and offered their perspective and advice to the grantees.

In her keynote address, Christine Iacobuzio-Donahue, MD, PhD, director of the David M. Rubenstein Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center—who cochaired the summit with Hidalgo—said that there has never been a better time to be a scientist than now. “The pace of data generation is the highest it has ever been, the tools available to scientists are expansive now, it is so complicated and it is so fast paced. It’s incredibly exciting,” she said.

Iacobuzio-Donahue, who is editor-in-chief of Cancer Research, offered some tips based on her academic experience on how to be the happiest scientist and clinician possible. She emphasized setting realistic goals and sticking to them, maintaining a healthy work-life balance, being kind to oneself, and staying laser-focused on the things that will advance one’s career.

The second keynote address was delivered by former AACR President David A. Tuveson, MD, PhD, FAACR, executive director of the Duke Cancer Institute.

As a past recipient of an AACR Career Development Award, Tuveson embodies what the AACR grant programs hope to achieve and the return on investment of funding research talent. Tuveson shared some reflections on the importance of being resilient, collaborating, remembering that cancer research is a calling more than a career, and remaining open to contradictory results. “Oftentimes, the confusing data that contradict your hypothesis are the most important contributions you will ever make.”

The Power of Collaboration and Engaging the Community

During a fireside chat, AACR President Keith T. Flaherty, MD, FAACR, director of clinical cancer research and the Richard Saltonstall Endowed Chair in Oncology at Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute, conversed with Robert A. Winn, MD, FAACR, cancer center director at the Fox Chase Cancer Center, about lessons from Winn’s research career journey.

Flaherty emphasized the role of organizations like AACR in bringing together and connecting scientists who operate in distant areas of the cancer research spectrum, such as himself and Winn.

Winn likened building an academic career to riding a skateboard, noting the importance of mastering basic momentum before learning to perform fancy tricks. He also talked about staying focused but also being flexible enough to be receptive to others’ perspective. In his case, he originally planned to be a primary care doctor to serve his neighborhood, but his mentor Francis Collins, MD, PhD, helped him appreciate that he could serve his neighborhood through research by combining patient care with scientific investigation, a realization that shaped his career as a physician-scientist.

Winn is widely recognized as a leading voice in understanding and reducing cancer health disparities by integrating communities into the research process and championing equitable access to clinical trials and cancer care. When asked by Flaherty how he tackled such a large and complex problem as health equity, Winn said that the concept of integrating neighborhood impact on the DNA and biological outcomes, which scientists in the field now call social molecular model, started with hallway conversations he had with other researchers at AACR meetings. He credited scientific interactions and collaborations as a key factor in his scientific development, pointing out to the trainees that the goal of attending conferences is not just to present one’s work, but also to connect with other researchers and discuss that work with them.

On the topic of trust in science, Winn discussed the importance of science communication to the public and how researchers should be multilingual, mastering both the rigorous technical language they speak with each other and the language of the community. “We may get so frustrated that people don’t understand us. Well, you don’t understand them either,” Winn argued, and added: “The word ‘illiterate’—we overuse and use incorrectly when it comes to our communities. These folks aren’t illiterate, they’re just simply unaware.”

We may get so frustrated that people don’t understand us. Well, you don’t understand them either. The word ‘illiterate’—we overuse and use incorrectly when it comes to our communities. These folks aren’t illiterate, they’re just simply unaware.

Once you get the community on board, magic happens, Winn continued, because people have the ability not only to understand the science but even to enhance it. “My science has literally been advanced because I was out in the community, and they also helped shape it.”

In conclusion of the conversation, in what Flaherty defined as a mic drop moment, Winn shared his vision for the future of science. “I think we are in an era where we actually have true convergence of very different sciences that come together in a transdisciplinary framework solving the bigger problems,” he said. “So, I’m excited about the future of science. I do know that science moves in one direction, and it moves forward.”

The summit included additional learning opportunities in the form of a lunch and learn session on communication and engagement skills, a panel discussion on drug development, and roundtable discussions around career development themes, such as strategic decision-making, building a long-term funding strategy, managing and mentoring students and staff, and time management.

Below are some highlights from the grantee presentations, including short videos in which they describe their research in a nutshell and talk about the impact of their AACR grants on their career.

Grantee Spotlight: A Potential New Treatment Strategy for Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Putzer J. Hung, MD, PhD, a hematology-oncology instructor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, was the recipient of the 2025 AACR-John and Elizabeth Leonard Family Foundation Basic Cancer Research Fellowship. Hung presented his work aimed at identifying and exploiting molecular vulnerabilities in acute myeloid leukemia (AML), one of the deadliest blood cancers in adults, to develop more effective treatments and generate durable responses.

Hung’s research focused on ribosomal RNAs (rRNAs), a type of noncoding RNA that form the core of ribosomes, which are the cell’s protein-manufacture machinery. rRNAs help assemble amino acids into proteins, which cells need to grow and function. Hung explained that a hallmark of AML cells is their enlarged nucleoli, which are the sites of rRNA synthesis by the RNA polymerase I (Pol I) enzyme.

Hung found that rRNA synthesis was increased in AML cells relative to normal cells. Furthermore, studies in an AML cell model suggested that activated oncogenes deregulate rRNA synthesis by increasing transcription by the Pol I enzyme.

Consistently, blocking Pol I reduced leukemic cell proliferation and viability and induced differentiation, indicating that rRNA synthesis is a driver of leukemogenesis. In addition, Pol I degradation synergized with venetoclax (Venclexta), a BCL-2 inhibitor that is widely used as frontline therapy for certain patients with AML. Combined Pol I and BCL-2 inhibition prolonged survival in a mouse model of AML compared with monotherapy and induced a prolonged response.

“It takes a village to grow a scientist,” concluded Hung, acknowledging his mentors, colleagues, and funding sources.

Grantee Spotlight: Racial Differences in Communicating Genetic Testing Results to Family Members

Kristen Whitaker, MD, a medical oncologist at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, received a 2022 AACR Career Development Award to Foster Diversity and Inclusion in Clinical Cancer Research in support of her population science work.

Why is it important to identify cancer-predisposing genetic changes? Whitaker asked. Awareness of a cancer-predisposing mutation helps with early detection of secondary cancers in the same individual and reveals eligibility for certain targeted therapies. It also allows for the identification of at-risk relatives who carry the same gene mutation before they have a diagnosis of cancer, a process known as cascade genetic testing. Whitaker’s passion lies in this important aspect of cancer prevention. She studies communication patterns and support needs associated with sharing the news of one’s genetic cancer predisposition with their family.

Most studies on this subject have been conducted in white participants, Whitaker said. She wanted to expand the analysis to a more diverse population, specifically to Black individuals.

Her study involved 12 Black and 14 white patients with cancer carrying a predisposing mutation. These participants completed virtual interviews about their experience disclosing the genetic information with their relatives.

Study results showed that both Black and white patients were overall comfortable in sharing their cancer diagnosis and genetic information with family members. However, white patients reported sharing results with immediate relatives and being selective based on family dynamics, while Black patients reported sharing also with extended family members. Black participants also reported greater challenges in understanding the genetic testing results, which impacted their ability to communicate them, and listed more barriers including cost and access to testing.

Both groups reported similar need for more educational information and more comprehensive support from health care teams related to genetic testing.

Grantee Spotlight: Miniature Organoids to Test Cancer Treatments

Zhaohui Wang, PhD, assistant professor at Duke University School of Medicine, who received the 2025 AACR-Novocure Career Development Award for Cancer Research, focuses on developing new human cancer models and functional precision medicine platforms for drug discovery.

Wang described the challenges related to establishing patient-derived in vitro models of glioma, including loss of molecular fidelity during prolonged culture, limited representation of the tumor microenvironment (TME), and limited capacity for drug testing.

To overcome these obstacles, he developed NanoGlio, a scalable organoid-based platform serving as a miniaturized patient avatar. Organoids are tiny, 3D tissue cultures grown from tumor cells that mimic the structure and cellular diversity of the original tumor. The platform uses a technology called microfluidics to create microscopic droplets, each incorporating an organoid, thus allowing for drug response studies at the single organoid level.

Leveraging the NanoGlio technology, the team assessed the combination of vorasidenib (Voranigo), a targeted therapy approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat gliomas with mutations in the IDH1 or IDH2 genes, and tumor-treating fields (TTFields), an FDA-approved therapy for glioblastoma that is based on delivery of low-intensity electric fields.

Preliminary findings shared by Wang showed that combining vorasidenib and TTFields may alter tumor growth and affect other properties of high-grade IDH-mutant glioma models.

Grantee Spotlight: An Antibody Therapy to Overcome Immune Evasion in Triple-negative Breast Cancer

Mercedes Beatriz Fuertes, PhD, assistant professor at the Institute of Biology and Experimental Medicine (IBYME) in Argentina, was granted the 2025 Breast Cancer Research Foundation-AACR Career Development Award to Promote Diversity and Inclusion.

The goal of her research is to identify novel targeted therapeutic options for triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). She focused on a protein called MHC class I chain-related protein A, or MICA, a stress-induced protein that is expressed on tumor cells but absent in normal tissues. Prolonged binding of MICA or a soluble version of the protein to its receptor NKG2D expressed on natural killer cells and T cells results in downregulation of the receptor, reduced immune cell activation, and ultimately contributes to immune escape of the tumor. Therefore, MICA is an attractive therapeutic target.

Fuertes and colleagues developed an anti-MICA monoclonal antibody and evaluated it in preclinical models of TNBC. Fuertes shared encouraging results showing that combined anti-MICA and anti-PD1 treatment reduced tumor growth, increased immune infiltration, and induced long-term immune memory.

The lab also generated an anti-MICA antibody-drug conjugate that had potent antitumor activity in cell lines. These findings suggested that anti-MICA therapy may promote tumor control and antitumor immunity and may represent a novel therapeutic strategy for TNBC.