NIH Award Recipient to Focus on Innovative Cancer Research

In September the National Institutes of Health announced the winners of their awards designated to encourage high-risk research and innovation. They have awarded $348 million to “encourage investigators to explore bold ideas that have the potential to catapult fields forward and speed the translation of research into improved health.”

The awards fall under three research programs supported by the NIH Common Fund’s Roadmap for Medical Research. The NIH Director’s Transformative R01 (T-R01) Awards – new in 2009, Pioneer Awards, and New Innovator Awards, are funded through the 2006 NIH Reform Act which emphasizes innovation and risk taking, and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

One of the T-RO1 winners, Sanford Markowitz, MD, PhD, of Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, is undertaking research for “identifying inborn genetic susceptibility to development of cancer metastasis.” Most deaths from cancer are a result of metastasis, and Markowitz is setting out to determine why some people are resistant to the spread, while others have an inborn genetic predisposition to the spread of the disease.

Markowitz believes the results of this study will “be felt in the identification of entirely new biological pathways that will be key to cancer management, to cancer prognosis, and to developing new and more effective anti-cancer therapies.”

The researchers are given the flexibility to work in large, complex teams if the complexity of the research problem demands it. The projects are funded over a five year period.

For a listing of all 2009 Transformative R01 Award Recipients see the NIH website.