Written by Yung S. Lie, PhD, President and Chief Executive Officer, Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation

Twenty-two brilliant early career investigators will receive funding to pursue cutting-edge cancer research.

Omar Abdel-Wahab, MD (Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator ‘13-‘16), from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Adrian R. Krainer, PhD, from Cold Spring Harbor, collaborated to uncover how a genetic mutation can cause RNA messages to be blocked, triggering biological steps that lead to most leukemias.

Inventing new drugs from scratch is expensive and time consuming—and even after that significant investment, over 50 percent of drug candidates fail in the final stages. Damon Runyon Board Member Todd R. Golub, MD, Former Damon Runyon Fellow Matthew L. Meyerson, MD, PhD, and colleagues, at the Broad Institute of MIT, Harvard and Dana-Farber Cancer Center, have developed a novel way to test FDA-approved non-oncology drugs for activity against cancer more efficiently, lowering the risk and cost involved in drug discovery.

This year the William Raveis Charitable Fund sponsors five outstanding young scientists, committing $450,000 to innovative projects with the greatest potential to impact cancer research. This support helps us foster the next generation of brave and bold scientists and fill gaps in traditional research funding that threaten future breakthroughs.

The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation announced that 12 scientists with novel approaches to fighting cancer have been named 2020 recipients of the Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award. Six initial grants of $400,000 over two years will fund projects that have the potential to significantly impact the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Each project demonstrating significant progres during the first two years of the award will have the opportunity for up to two additional years of funding (four years total for $800,000).

​Karuna Ganesh, MD, PhD (Clinical Investigator ’19-’22), and her colleagues at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, have discovered a novel framework for approaching metastasis and developing treatments. The researchers found that metastasis-initiating cells can hijack the body’s natural wound-healing abilities to colonize distant organs.

The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research has awarded six grants to promising early career scientists for projects aimed at addressing unmet needs in cancer research. Eliezer Van Allen, MD (Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator ’15-’20), of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, received the competitive award for his research to improve clinical care for prostate cancer patients.

Scientists have found a clue as to how melanoma cells are able to metastasize. Ralph J. DeBerardinis, MD, PhD (Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator ’11-’14) and colleagues at Children's Medical Center Research Institute at UT Southwestern (CRI) discovered that some melanoma cells carry proteins on their surface that help them survive the hostile environment of the bloodstream as they travel to distant organs and form new tumors.

This year, five Damon Runyon alumni were chosen as American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellows in honor of their invaluable contributions to science and technology.