Damon Runyon News

The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation has named 16 new Damon Runyon Fellows, exceptional postdoctoral scientists conducting basic and translational cancer research in the laboratories of leading senior investigators. The prestigious, four-year Fellowship encourages the nation's most promising young scientists to pursue careers in cancer research by providing them with independent funding ($260,000 total) to investigate cancer causes, mechanisms, therapies, and prevention.

Amid growing calls for academic and funding institutions to recognize the financial hardships faced by postdoctoral researchers across the country, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation has announced that it will increase its Fellowship stipend by 12.5% over the award’s four-year term. The stipend increase will be effective for all Damon Runyon Fellows whose awards begin or renew on or after July 1, 2022.

The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation has named five new Damon Runyon Clinical Investigators. The recipients of this prestigious award are outstanding, early-career physician-scientists conducting patient-oriented cancer research at major research centers under the mentorship of the nation's leading scientists and clinicians.

The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation celebrated 75 years of funding cancer research at Gotham Hall in New York on June 1, 2022. The event raised nearly $1 million to support promising early-career scientists pursuing innovative strategies to prevent, diagnose, and treat all forms of cancer.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors work by releasing the “brakes” on immune T cells, unleashing them upon cancer cells. After the discovery of two of these brakes, PD-1 and CTLA-4, and the subsequent cascade of drugs targeting them, the search for new checkpoints to target stalled. But this spring, the FDA approved a new melanoma drug called relatlimab, which targets LAG-3—the first new checkpoint in almost a decade.

Just before dawn on Monday, October 4, 2021, David Julius, PhD, a longtime Damon Runyon mentor and former Fellowship Award Committee member, and Ardem Patapoutian, PhD, a former Damon Runyon awardee, received news that they had won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. The award recognized the two scientists’ independent “discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch.” Ardem and his team at Scripps Research discovered the Piezo channel proteins, essential for our sense of touch. For David, the Nobel culminated over three decades of research at the University of California, San Francisco, on the proteins that help us sense temperature and pain.

Three scientists with exceptional promise and novel approaches to fighting cancer have been named the 2022 recipients of the Damon Runyon Physician-Scientist Training Award. The awardees were selected through a highly competitive and rigorous process by a scientific committee comprised of leading cancer researchers who are themselves physician-scientists.

Damon Runyon scientists and industry partners gathered in person and virtually on Thursday, May 19 for the 2022 Accelerating Cancer Cures Symposium, hosted by Merck in South San Francisco.

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS), established in 1863, is the body of distinguished researchers “charged with providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology.” Election to membership is among the highest honors a scientist can receive. This year, eight Damon Runyon alumni join the NAS ranks, bringing the total number of Damon Runyon alumni in NAS to 97.

It is with sadness that we announce the passing of Damon Runyon alumnus, Emeritus Board Member, and Nobel Laureate Sidney Altman, PhD. He was 82.