American Association for Cancer Research

Translational Breast Cancer Research Grant
BCRF funds are supporting new, two-year BCRF-AACR Grants in Translational Breast Cancer Research. AACR's research grant program highlights promising and innovative new research selected through a flexible, rigorous and transparent peer review process.

The 2007-2008 BCRF-AACR grant recipients are:

1) Ingrid Mayer, MD, at Vanderbilt University, whose research is addressing resistance to endocrine therapies through a Phase II neoadjuvant study, in which she hopes to demonstrate the effectiveness of combining an aromatase inhibitor with an EGFR/HER2 inhibitor, thus restoring sensitivity to endocrine therapy and preventing the emergence of resistant cells.

2) Alana Welm, PhD, at the University of Utah, who hopes to develop a diagnostic test for over-expression of the MSP pathway as a biomarker for poor prognosis and to carry out pre-clinical tests of three MSP pathway inhibitors for the ability to block growth and/or metastasis

3) Douglas Yee, MD, director of the Cancer Center at the University of Minnesota, who aims to develop gene expression profiles to predict which cancers are insulin growth factor (IGF)-driven, and thus, which patients may best benefit from these inhibitors.

Mid-Year Progress Reports:
Mid-year reports for year 1 of these two-year grants are due in April 2008.