The AACR-Genentech Research Fellowships represent a joint effort to encourage and support postdoctoral or clinical research fellows to conduct cancer research and to establish a successful career path in this field. Funded research can be in basic, translational, clinical, or population sciences.

2026 Grantee

Scientific Statement of Research

LGBTQ+ adolescents and young adults (AYAs) with cancer experience dramatically elevated rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidality due to the compounding effects of minority stress and a cancer diagnosis. However, no population-specific interventions exist to address these mental health inequities. Dr. Waters will adapt the Promoting Resilience in Stress Management (PRISM) intervention, an existing evidence-based psychosocial intervention for AYAs with cancer, to better support LGBTQ+ AYAs. Using a sequential mixed-methods design, he will assess mental health inequities by LGBTQ+ status and age at diagnosis in the AYA VOICE cohort, capture provider and patient perspectives on psychosocial care needs, and iteratively refine the intervention using cognitive think-aloud methodology. Grounded in Minority Stress Theory and Intervention Mapping for Adaptation, this work will lay the foundation for a scalable, theoretically grounded intervention for a population navigating both cancer and minority stress that has been largely overlooked.

Biography

Dr. Waters received a master’s degree of Public Health from the University of Utah and a doctoral degree in Health Policy and Management from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Population Sciences at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Harvard LGBTQ Health Center of Excellence. His research focuses on prevention, access, and outcomes among cancer survivors and caregivers with an emphasis on LGBTQ+ and adolescent and young adult (AYA) populations. He is committed not only to rigorously documenting health inequities, but also to actively developing interventions to address them.

Statement of Support

“This fellowship will provide critical protected time and resources for Dr. Waters to adapt PRISM to meet the psychosocial needs of LGBTQ+ AYA cancer survivors. Given the current funding climate, this support is particularly meaningful and will accelerate his trajectory toward leadership in LGBTQ+ cancer disparities research and academic independence.”

2024 Grantees

Research

Significant racial disparities exist in multiple myeloma (MM) and its precursor stages, where a 2-3 fold higher incidence is observed among Black individuals compared to non-Hispanic White individuals. Dr. Kim aims to discover germline risk alleles or genes that are strongly associated with MM precursor stages (as detected by mass spectrometry) in 8,000 individuals (including 2,500 Black individuals) from the Mass General Brigham Biobank cohort. Firstly, associations between MM precursors, inferred genetic ancestry, and polygenic risk score from all mass spectrometry-screened participants based on genotype data will be evaluated. Secondly, candidate risk alleles, genes, or HLA that are significantly associated with phenotypes will be identified. Lastly, these findings will be validated in other available data and cohorts of African individuals.

Biography

Dr. Kim received an undergraduate degree in Biomedical Science from the Imperial College London in 2014 and a doctorate in Biomedical Science from Seoul National University, College of Medicine in 2022. During his doctoral studies, he contributed to multiple research efforts in precision medicine, utilizing various types of sequencing data. He joined the Broad Institute as a postdoctoral associate in 2023, where he focuses on the biological understanding of potential precursor stages of MM and the underlying germline risks that contribute to its development.

Acknowledgment of Support

“I am honored and grateful to receive the AACR-Genentech Cancer Disparities Research Fellowship. I hope that this study will enhance the understanding of racial disparities in multiple myeloma and its precursor stages. This opportunity will advance my research career and enable me to become an independent researcher.”

Research

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) often fails to respond to conventional T-cell based immunotherapies. Dendritic cells (DCs) can induce anti-tumor T cell responses, making them an attractive immunotherapeutic target. The addition of the oxidized phospholipid PGPC can stimulate a “hyperactive” DC (hDC) state, resulting in more robust and durable T cell responses. Dr. Cao has demonstrated that hDCs are recruited to the tumor proper and are associated with an enrichment of intra-tumoral antigen-specific CD8+ T cells and durable T cell-mediated IFNy production. She seeks to leverage the innate immune system to develop a novel treatment strategy against HCC.

Biography

Dr. Cao obtained her undergraduate degree in molecular biology from Cornell University. As part of her pursuit of her medical and doctoral degrees at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, she studied the role of the atypical cadherin Fat1 in regulating vascular smooth muscle cell growth after vascular injury. She is currently an advanced fellow in Pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease at Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH), where she is studying the role of innate immunity in hepatocellular carcinoma.

Acknowledgment of support

“This fellowship supports my career goal of becoming a physician-scientist. I am interested in studying the complex interaction between immune cells within the tumor microenvironment, and to elucidate molecular pathways that can be leveraged for novel immunotherapies against cancers that are typically resistant to conventional treatments, such as hepatocellular carcinoma.”