The Sidney Kimmel Foundation For Cancer Research Announces 2014 Grant Recipients
Philadelphia, PA (PRWEB) April 22, 2014 -- The Sidney Kimmel Foundation for Cancer Research has selected the 2014 recipients for the Kimmel Scholar Program. Fifteen research scientists and medical doctors from across the United States will receive two year grants totaling $200,000 under the Foundation's on-going Kimmel Scholar program. This year's selection brings the total to 247 talented cancer researchers who have been provided with grant money since the Foundation's inception.
The Kimmel Scholar Awards were created to advance the careers of gifted, young scientists involved in cancer research. Those selected are chosen for demonstrating the greatest promise and innovation in their work, must be in the early stages of their research career, and have not progressed far enough to have received major grants from the National Cancer Institute or other funding sources.
Sidney Kimmel, the organization's namesake, founder of The Jones Group Inc., and president of Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, meets each year with the Foundation's medical advisory board as the esteemed group of leading cancer doctors narrows down the applicants from a pool of approximately 150. Since 1997 Sidney Kimmel has contributed more than $550 million to cancer centers and cancer research and another $100 million to the arts and Jewish continuity. Kimmel is a member of Warren Buffett's Giving Pledge, having already committed more than half of his net worth to charitable causes.
Many of the exceptional young scientists who have their careers "jump started" by the Sidney Kimmel Foundation for Cancer Research go on to receive millions of dollars in funding from the NCI and NIH and make significant contributions to the field of cancer research. Many report that they might never have achieved such success without first receiving a Kimmel grant.
The recipients for 2014 are:
• Karim-Jean Armache, PhD
New York University
“Structure and mechanism of PRC2 in health and cancer”
• *Kathrin Bernt, MD
University of Colorado, Denver
“Epigenetic targeting of MN1-high, poor prognosis acute myeloid leukemia”
• *Ryan Fields, MD
Washington University, St. Louis
“Improving outcomes in metastatic colorectal cancer – A comprehensive genomic, transcriptomic, epigenetic, and metabolomic profiling of matched primary and metastatic colorectal cancer specimens”
• Viviana Gradinaru, PhD
California Institute of Technology
“Optical switches for spatially and temporally precise cancer interrogation”
• Mitchell Guttman, PhD
California Institute of Technology
“Uncovering principles of large non-coding RNA regulatory specificity in cancer”
• Andrew Holland, PhD
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
“Exploring and exploiting centrosome amplification in hematological malignancies”
• *Mohit Jain, MD, PhD
University of California, San Diego
“Comprehensive reconstruction of global metabolic enzyme activity in-vivo in human cancer”
• *Filip Janku, MD, PhD
University of Texas, MD Anderson
“Liquid Biopsies in advanced cancers with V600 BRAF mutations”
• Kitai Kim, PhD
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
“Aging associated oncogenic epigenetic signatures in induced pluripotent stem cells”
• *James Kim, MD, PhD
University of Texas, Southwestern
“The interaction of stromal hedgehog pathway with cancer stem cells of lung adenocarcinoma”
• Alexei Korennykh, PhD
Princeton University
“Systems biology of interferon activated RNA decay in cancer metastasis”
• Shannon Lauberth, PhD
University of California, San Diego
“Understanding the role of epigenetic alterations in the deregulation of gene expression in human colorectal carcinoma”
• Sabine Petry, PhD
Princeton University
“Molecular basis of the chromosome segregation machinery and its malfunction”
• Gang Wang, PhD
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
“Deciphering the role of histone demethylation in hematopoietic malignancies”
• Qing Zhang, PhD
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
“Determining the regulation of progesterone receptor (PR) by EgIN2 in tamoxifen resistant breast cancer”
*Translational Research
The Foundation is particularly interested in helping physicians who are engaged in research which can rapidly be translated into benefits for patients with cancer. This year five of the fifteen awards have been designated for such "Translational Research."
The Sidney Kimmel Foundation for Cancer Research has also funded cancer centers at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Thomas Jefferson University and Johns Hopkins University. The gift to Johns Hopkins, $150 million, is the largest gift ever received by that institution. In the area of arts and culture, The Kimmel Foundation has supported the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts and National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia as well as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., among others. For more information visit http://www.kimmel.org.
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Risa B. Hoag, Sidney Kimmel Foundation, http://www.kimmel.org, +1 845-627-3000, [email protected]
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