RESEARCHERS AT Baylor College of Medicine have received more than $3 million from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) to fund three new grants focused on tobacco control, cancer screening, and novel treatments for cancer in children and adults.
CPRIT was launched in 2009 following a constitutional amendment to commit $3 billion to the fight against cancer over the course of 10 years. This year, CPRIT has awarded 57 new grants totaling more than $73.5 million to support academic research, prevention, product development research, as well as the recruitment of outstanding cancer scientists to academic institutions in Texas.
Roger Zoorob, MD, MPH
Roger Zoorob, MD, MPH, the Richard M. Kleberg, Sr. Professor and Chair in Family Medicine, received roughly a $1 million grant to better understand tobacco control and lung cancer screening, with the goal of achieving equitable access to lung cancer screening and smoking cessation treatment by means of a comprehensive primary care and community health approach.
Yongcheng Song, PhD
Yongcheng Song, PhD, Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology and a member of the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center at Baylor, received $900,000 as an individual investigator to support his work in using small-molecule probes to target histone acetyltransferase enzymes, which play a role in epigenetic regulation of gene expression.
Richard Louis Hurwitz, MD
Richard Louis Hurwitz, MD, Associate Professor of Pediatrics-Oncology and a member of the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center at Baylor, was awarded a $1 million grant as an individual investigator for cancer research in children and adolescents. His project will study the viability of using microwafers as a novel drug or gene-delivery vehicle for noninvasive treatment of retinoblastoma.
