11 faculty members receive more than $8 million in CPRIT funding

Eleven MD Anderson UTHealth Houston Graduate School faculty members were awarded grants totaling over $8.8 million from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) in support of cancer research projects.

Since its inception, CPRIT has awarded more than $3 billion in grants for cancer research. Programs supported by CPRIT funding have brought more than 288 distinguished cancer researchers to Texas, advanced the knowledge base for cancer treatment throughout the state and provided more than 8.2 million cancer prevention and early detection services reaching all 254 counties in Texas.

All the recipients were recognized with Individual Investigator Research Awards. The school’s CPRIT awardees are:

• Michael Curran, PhD, associate professor, Department of Immunology, MD Anderson Cancer Center. He is affiliated with the Immunology program. His funded project received $1,049,905 and is titled, “Blocking DNA damage response induction of ‘don’t eat me’ signals converts local radiotherapy into systemic immunotherapy.”
• Eleonora Dondossola, PhD, associate professor, Department of Genitourinary Medical Oncology, MD Anderson. She is affiliated with the Cancer Biology, and Therapeutics and Pharmacology programs. Her funded project received $1,025,623 and is titled, “Overcoming therapy resistance by integrated computational modeling of the bone metastatic niche in prostate and renal cancers.”
• Boyi Gan, PhD, professor, Departments of Experimental Radiation Oncology & Molecular and Cellular Oncology, MD Anderson. He is affiliated with Cancer Biology, and Genetics and Epigenetics programs. His funded project received $1,050,000 and is titled, “Studying and therapeutically targeting ferroptosis liability in BRCA1 deficient cancer.”
• Jian Hu, PhD, associate professor, Department of Cancer Biology, MD Anderson. He is affiliated with Cancer Biology and Neuroscience programs. His funded project received $1,400,000 and is titled, “Normalizing membrane homeostasis in microglia/macrophages of pediatric high-grade gliomas.”
• Sue-Hwa Lin, PhD, professor, Department of Translational Molecular Pathology, MD Anderson. She is affiliated with the Cancer Biology program. Her funded project received $1,050,000 and is titled, “A novel combination therapeutic approach to revitalizing immunotherapy for bone metastatic prostate cancer.”
• Joseph McCarty, PhD, professor and vice chair, Department of Neurosurgery, MD Anderson. He is affiliated with Cancer Biology, and Genetics and Epigenetics programs. His funded project received $1,050,000 and is titled, “Targeting the Mlc1-GlialCAM protein complex in invasive glioma cells.”
• Cullen Taniguchi, MD, PhD, associate professor, Department of Radiation Oncology, MD Anderson. He is affiliated with Cancer Biology Program.  His funded project received $1,049,997 and is titled, “Enhancing immune responses in pancreatic cancer by stromal inhibition of HIF2.” 
• Peng Wei, PhD, associate professor, Department of Biostatistics, MD Anderson. He is affiliated with Quantitative Sciences program. His funded project received $1,199,994 and is titled, “Integrative modeling of spatially resolved multi-omics data to identify bladder cancer mucosal field effects.”
• Wantong Yao, MD, PhD, associate professor, Department of Translational Molecular Pathology, MD Anderson. She is affiliated with Cancer Biology, and Genetics and Epigenetics programs. Her funded project received $1,049,854 and is titled, “A novel therapeutic strategy targeting pancreatic cancer.”
• Niki Zacharias Millward, PhD, assistant professor, Department of Urology, MD Anderson. She is affiliated with the Therapeutics and Pharmacology program. Her funded project received $1,019,997 and is titled, “Targeting distinct metabolic vulnerabilities of aggressive renal cell carcinoma variants.”