Since 1993, the AACR has awarded more than $540 million in grants to fund meritorious research projects across the spectrum of cancer science, including basic, translational, and clinical research. See how the AACR grants program has contributed to the AACR's mission.
With a little help from the AACR, a fascination with cancer-associated viruses has turned into a successful career in research for Blossom Damania, PhD, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill – a career that has gone global with research projects on four continents.
2018 AACR-AstraZeneca Lung Cancer Fellow Sushil Kumar demonstrated how inhibition of an epigenetic regulator, arginine methyltransferase CARM1, resulted not only in enhanced anti-tumor activity of T cells but also increased susceptibility of tumor cells to T cell-mediated killing.
Kimberly Kelly, PhD, the CEO of a biotech startup called ZielBio, received an AACR-PanCAN Career Development Award for Pancreatic Cancer Research as one of the first grants of her independent academic career. The value of the grant, she says, is more than the money.
The AACR NextGen Grants for Transformative Cancer Research represent the AACR’s flagship funding initiative to stimulate highly innovative research from young investigators. 2017 NextGen grantee, Hani Goodarzi, PhD, shares the impact of this grant on his career and on metastasis research, especially in colorectal cancer.
Kidney cancer is one of the most common cancers in the US. AACR has partnered with Kure It since 2012 to support innovative translational kidney cancer research. Researchers supported by this partnership have made progress against kidney cancer on multiple fronts.
The SU2C-Lustgarten Foundation Pancreatic Cancer Dream Team set out in 2014 to develop immune-based therapeutic strategies for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA). Their efforts were spurred by the underlying hypothesis that the immunosuppressive PDA milieu could be reprogrammed into an immuno-stimulatory one capable of tumor rejection, thus converting PDA into a treatable disease.
When Edna Cukierman, PhD, obtained an independent research position and decided to apply for a cancer research grant, she had one problem: “I didn’t know anything about cancer,” she recalls.
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to ravage the world, conferences and meetings worldwide are being canceled or moved to virtual mode. This loss of in-person interactions has significantly reduced the number of opportunities for researchers to share ideas, present research, learn career advancement skills, and establish connections with peers, colleagues, and potential collaborators.
The AACR-Novocure Tumor Treating Fields Research Grants represent a joint effort to promote and support innovative research focused on Tumor Treating Fields (TTFields), which are intermediate frequency, low intensity, alternating electric fields that disrupt cell division in cancer cells. 2020 grant recipient Carsten Hagemann, PhD, shares his perspectives on the myriad benefits of the grant.
Researchers have been trying to get a better understanding of the biodistribution and durability of the CAR T response once inside the body. Two recent publications in Cancer Research and Clinical Cancer Research have reported on two different kinds of PET imaging techniques to monitor the CAR T cells inside the body.