The Cancer Grand Challenges Program Awards $100 Million To Four Research Teams

The National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, announced on Thursday that four international research teams had been selected to receive a total of $100 million as part of the Cancer Grand Challenges program. Each team will receive $25 million over five years as it tackles one of cancer’s most challenging problems.

NCI partnered with Cancer Research UK in 2020, to initiate the Cancer Grand Challenges program, which aims to support investigations that have “the greatest potential to advance cancer research and improve outcomes for people affected by cancer.” Its current plan (2021) calls for the provision of multiple rounds of funding for multidisciplinary research teams to investigate nine of the toughest problems associated with cancer.

In NCI’s news release, Douglas R. Lowy, M.D., acting director of NCI, said, “We’re confident these multidisciplinary teams of scientists — with the flexibility and scale to innovate and carry out cutting-edge research — will be able to address several critical cancer research problems that can advance the understanding of cancer and benefit patients.”

“Cancer is a global issue that demands global collaboration. By investing in team science at this scale, we will bring new thinking to problems that have, for too long, stood in the way of progress,” added David Scott, Ph.D., director of Cancer Grand Challenges, Cancer Research UK. “At its core, Cancer Grand Challenges provides multidisciplinary teams the time, space, and freedom to innovate and drive progress against cancer that the world urgently needs.”

The four winning teams were chosen from a total of 169 research groups, from more than 60 countries, that had submitted preliminary proposals. That field was then narrowed to eleven teams – chosen though an expert review process – that received seed funding to expand their initial ideas into full proposals.

The four funded teams – and the specific challenge each will address – include:

1) The CANCAN team will explore cancer cachexia. Cachexia is a wasting syndrome that causes a dramatic loss of weight and muscle mass. It occurs in the advanced stages of many kinds of cancer and is a contributing factor in a significant percentage of cancer deaths.

This team is led by Eileen White, Ph.D., Rutgers Institute of New Jersey; Marcus DaSilva Goncalves, M.D., Ph.D., Weill Cornell Medicine, New York City; and Tobias Janowitz, M.D., Ph.D., Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York.

2) The eDyNAmiC team will research the creation and action of extrachromosomal DNA, which helps tumors evolve and evade treatment. High levels of extrachromosomal circular DNA is found in up to a third of human cancer cells, although its frequency varies among different types of tumors. This team will also seek to develop new ways to target these mechanisms in cancer.

The team is led by Paul Mischel, M.D., Stanford University. Other investigators include Vineet Bafna, Ph.D., Professor of Computer Science & Engineering, University of California San Diego; Howard Chang, M.D., Ph.D., Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor of Cancer Genomics and Genetics, Stanford University; Ben Cravatt, Ph.D., Professor and Gilula Chair of Chemical Biology, The Scripps Research Institute; and Roel Verhaak, Professor and Associate Director of Computational Biology, The Florine Deschenes Roux Chair for Genomics and Computational Biology, The Jackson Laboratory.

3) The NexTGen team will develop engineered T-cell therapies for childhood cancer. Although survival has increased for some pediatric cancers, survival rates for some solid tumors have improved little over the past 30 years. This team intends to create novel therapies for children with solid tumors, hoping they can increase survival and reduce lifelong toxicities often suffered by survivors.

The team is led by Catherine Bollard, M.D., Director of the Center for Cancer and Immunology Research at the Children’s National Research Institute, Washington, D.C.; and Martin Pule, University College London.

The PROMINENT team will investigate what causes normal cells to become cancerous. They will explore what keeps normal cells healthy and how carcinogens and other mutation-forming factors help turn a normal cell into a tumor cell.

The team will be led by Allan Balmain, Ph.D., University of California San Francisco; Paul Brennan, Ph.D., International Agency for Research on Cancer; and Núria López Bigas, Ph.D., Institute for Research in Biomedicine Barcelona.

The next funding rounds of the NCI-Cancer Research UK partnership are planned for 2023 and 2025.

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