The National Cancer Institute (NCI) awarded a $607,250 five-year Project Grant under the Cancer Cause and Prevention Research (CFDA 93.393) federal grant program to the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA. The grant, titled "Investigating DNA Polymerase Theta in Replication Stress and Cancer Therapy," will support research to examine the role of DNA Polymerase Theta (POLQ) in repairing DNA double-strand breaks caused by replication stress, which is associated with cancer...
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) awarded a $487,393 Project Grant under the Cancer Cause and Prevention Research (CFDA 93.393) program to the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research in New York, NY. The grant's objective is to investigate the role of key proteins like RAD52, HELQ, and POLQ in backup DNA double-strand break repair pathways for homologous recombination deficient (HRD) cancers. The research aims to define new therapeutic targets and develop functional assays to identify...
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) awarded a $240,092 Project Grant under the Cancer Biology Research (CFDA 93.396) program to the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. The grant supports the implementation of a new mass spectrometry-based protein footprinting technique called Covalent Protein Painting (CPP) to measure protein conformations and protein-protein interactions in single cancer cells. The key objectives are to quantify lysine site accessibility in single cells using...
This Project Grant award from the National Cancer Institute (CFDA 93.398 - Cancer Research Manpower) provides $238,722 to the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research to investigate the role of mutagenic DNA repair in the persistence of cancer cells and the development of acquired drug resistance. The key objectives of this 3-year research project are to: (1) examine persistence mechanisms in BRCA1/2-mutant cancer cells treated with PARP inhibitors, (2) explore the role of the mutagenic DNA...
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) awarded a $138,489 Project Grant under the Cancer Research Manpower (CFDA 93.398) federal grant program to the University of California, Irvine. The two-year grant, awarded on September 20, 2025, will fund research focused on developing a "methyl arginine targeting chimera" to induce the lysosomal degradation of intracellular proteins. This novel approach aims to overcome limitations of current protein degradation methods that rely on the proteasomal...
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) awarded a $335,470 Project Grant under the Cancer Research Manpower (CFDA 93.398) federal grant program to Duke University. The grant funds a research project titled "Chromosomal Instability and 17P Loss Sensitize Cancer Cells to NDE1 Depletion", which aims to define the relationship between chromosomal instability, loss of chromosome 17p, and sensitivity to inhibition of the mitotic regulator NDE1. The project will characterize the role of NDE1 in...
This $368,288 Project Grant award from the National Cancer Institute (CFDA 93.396 Cancer Biology Research) supports research by the University of California, Davis to understand the molecular mechanisms of homologous recombination and DNA repair processes involving the BRCA2, RAD51, and RAD51 paralog proteins. The research aims to characterize how defects in these proteins can lead to chromosome instability and cancer predisposition. The researchers will conduct biochemical analyses, examine...
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) awarded a $942,442 Project Grant under the Cancer Cause and Prevention Research (CFDA 93.393) program to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Inc. (DFCI) in Boston, MA. The grant, effective September 1, 2024, supports research to identify the mechanisms driving rapid evolution of cancer genomes, with a focus on understanding the processes of chromothripsis and chromoplexy. The research aims to advance the fundamental knowledge of these catastrophic mutational...
This federal Project Grant award of $584,872 from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) under the Cancer Treatment Research program (CFDA 93.395) supports research to investigate targeting R-loop-induced genomic instability as a potential therapeutic strategy for myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) patients with endogenous mutations in RNA splicing factor genes. The two main aims of the research are: 1) to dissect the molecular mechanisms underlying the sensitivity of splicing mutant MDS cells to...
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) awarded a $329,622 Project Grant under the Cancer Research Manpower (CFDA 93.398) program to the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The grant, effective August 1, 2024 through February 4, 2028, will support research to characterize the gene accessibility and transcriptional landscape required for Merkel cell polyomavirus (MCV) T-antigen-mediated reprogramming and identify cell types competent for this process. The research aims to generate novel insights...
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) awarded a $218,068 Project Grant under the Cancer Research Manpower (CFDA 93.398) program to the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. The grant, awarded on September 26, 2024, will fund research to elucidate the mechanism of microhomology-mediated end joining (MMEJ) by DNA polymerase theta (POLT). The project aims to gain new insights into this error-prone DNA repair pathway, which is heavily relied upon in BRCA1/2-deficient cancers. The research will combine biochemical and cell-based assays with gene editing and structural biology approaches to understand how POLT coordinates MMEJ and identify critical interactions for efficient MMEJ. This work is expected to reveal new strategies for developing POLT inhibitors as potential therapeutics for treating homologous recombination-deficient cancers.