Break Through Cancer, a research foundation, has awarded $50 million to five of the nation's leading cancer centers to spearhead projects aimed at improving outcomes for some of the deadliest cancers: glioblastoma, ovarian and pancreatic cancers.
The grants were awarded to research teams at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston; Boston-based Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; New York City-based Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center; the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge; and Baltimore-based Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins.
Each of the funded projects will use a "TeamLab" model that enables researchers across each institution to collaborate in real time.
The four initial research projects being funded are: "Intercepting Ovarian Cancer;" "Targeting Minimal Residual Disease in Ovarian Cancer;" "Conquering KRAS in Pancreatic Cancer;" and "Revolutionizing GBM Drug Development Through Serial Biopsies."
"Accelerating the pace of discovery requires bringing basic, translational and clinical investigators together in 'one room,' and Break Through Cancer's model allows us to do just that," said Alan D'Andrea, MD, director of Dana-Farber's Susan F. Smith Center for Women's Cancers and director of the Center for DNA Damage and Repair. "Working collaboratively, we will be tackling several of the most challenging, complex and lethal cancers, and I believe that this work will be transformational to cancer research as a whole."
Break Through Cancer first launched in February 2021 to bring together teams from the nation's leading cancer research centers to develop new treatments, advance clinical trials and improve outcomes.