Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovator Elli Papaemmanuil, PhD, and colleagues at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center have uncovered new clues that may help answer a troubling question—why do some patients develop a secondary blood cancer after receiving radiation or chemotherapy treatment for their initial cancer diagnosis? 

Pancreatic cancer is particularly difficult to diagnose since people usually have no symptoms until the cancer reaches a more advanced stage or spreads to other organs. Though progress against this cancer has been slow, Damon Runyon researchers are making an impact through understanding the biology and developing novel treatments.

Damon Runyon-National Mah Jongg League Fellow Deepshika Ramanan, PhD, has been selected as part of the 2020 class of STAT Wunderkinds, an annual award recognizing the next generation of “scientific superstars.” These researchers are blazing new trails as they tackle some of the biggest questions in science and medicine.

Researchers have conducted the biggest study ever into the path that individual blood cells take to becoming leukemia. Former Damon Runyon-Sohn Fellow Robert L. Bowman, PhD, Former Fellow Aaron D. Viny, MD, and colleagues at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center examined how a series of stepwise mutations in normal blood cells could trigger the transformation to cancer. 

Many cancer immunotherapies, drugs that activate a patient’s immune system, have emerged in recent years, but none are universally effective. To address this shortcoming, Clinical Investigator Anusha Kalbasi, MD, and colleagues at the University of California Los Angeles found a drug that activates the body's natural defenses by behaving like a virus and may uncloak certain stealthy melanoma tumors, so they can be better targeted by immunotherapy.

The Damon Runyon-Jake Wetchler Award for Pediatric Innovation is given annually to a third-year Damon Runyon Fellow whose research has the greatest potential to impact the prevention, diagnosis, or treatment of pediatric cancer. This year, Damon Runyon Fellow Dian Yang, PhD, at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research received this special award.

Five alumni were elected to the National Academy of Medicine, bringing the total number of Damon Runyon scientists who are members to 37. Membership is considered to be one of the highest honors in the medical field and recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service.  

Six months after laboratories were shuttered due to COVID-19, most of our affected Damon Runyon scientists have restarted their research with limited hours in the lab. Often, this means working in shifts either early mornings, late nights, or on weekends to maintain social distancing guidelines.

When Anthony and Lauren Terebetsky took their 7-year-old son, Ryan, to the hospital for blood tests, they were thinking about dinner, Ryan’s homework, their daughter starting spring softball, his job at the firehouse and hers as a teacher—not a life changing diagnosis.

Former Damon Runyon Innovator Guillem Pratx, PhD, and colleagues at Stanford University have devised a way to use a common imaging technology called positron emission tomography, or PET, to watch the movement of a single cell injected into a laboratory mouse in real time.