Damon Runyon News

Gordon J. Freeman, PhD (Damon Runyon Fellow ’79-’81), Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, is one of five scientists honored by the 2017 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize for discoveries focused on “Immune Checkpoint Blockade and the Transformation of Cancer Therapy.” Collectively, their work has elucidated foundational mechanisms in cancer’s ability to evade immune recognition through the CTLA-4 and PD-1 pathways and, in doing so, has profoundly altered the understanding of disease development and treatment.

Liron Bar-Peled, PhD (Damon Runyon Fellow ‘14-‘17) of the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, developed a new proteomics-based approach to discover small-molecule inhibitors that could be used as anti-cancer therapies. The approach is based on the fact that certain amino acids on proteins have a special chemical reactivity that allows them to form irreversible covalent bonds with suitably designed probe or "scout" molecules.

Alexandra Zidovska, PhD (Damon Runyon Fellow ‘10-‘12) of New York University, New York, has discovered the “internal clock” of live human cells using state-of-the-art fluorescence microscopy. Previously, the only way to tell the precise point of a cell in its life cycle was by studying dead cells. Alexandra’s lab has found that the nuclear envelope, which separates the nucleus with the DNA from the rest of the cell, has a previously undetected type of motion: it fluctuates in shape every few seconds.

Kristopher R. Bosse, MD (Damon Runyon Physician Scientist '16-'20) of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, is engineering a new drug to selectively target neuroblastoma cells and deliver a chemotherapeutic agent into the cells. Neuroblastoma is a cancer of the developing nervous system that usually occurs as a solid tumor in a child's chest or abdomen, and is the most common cancer in infants.

We recently ended our 2017 Fiscal Year. It was an exceptional year in many respects, especially as it was our 70^th Anniversary. We celebrated this milestone at our annual breakfast benefit by recognizing the scientists who have gotten us to a point in time where progress in cancer research is accelerating rapidly and more new therapies are being approved for patients.

Click here to see our report on our progress over the past 70 years. It highlights Damon Runyon scientists who:

Five researchers have been announced as the recipients of the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research for 2017. They have made important contributions to the development of CRISPR-Cas9, a gene engineering technology that harnesses a naturally occurring bacterial immune system process. The technology has revolutionized biomedical research and provided new hope for the treatment of genetic diseases and more.

They met on the dance floor at a party thrown by postdoctoral students from each of their labs at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, and reconnected a couple months later at a genetics lecture. "And then she finally gave me her phone number!" says Steve.

By Michael Caligiuri, MD, President of the American Association for Cancer Research

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen the kind of strong national commitment that exists today to support medical research.

Of course, this enthusiasm is more than justified because of the large number of unprecedented research opportunities that are at the ready to propel us toward defeating cancer and the numerous other diseases that afflict so many Americans.

The FDA approved Idhifa for acute myeloid leukemia (AML), the result of important contributions from Hai Yan, MD, PhD (Damon Runyon Scholar ‘05-‘07), of Duke University Medical Center, Durham, and Omar Abdel-Wahab, MD (Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator ‘13-‘16), of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York. They made independent discoveries about mutations in the IDH2 gene and how these contribute to the development of AML.

By Nadia Halim, Damon Runyon Science Writer

After mounting excitement in the last five years over a revolutionary approach to cancer therapy, patients are one step closer to seeing CAR T immunotherapy approved by the FDA for acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), the most common type of childhood cancer. The FDA’s 10-member advisory panel unanimously recommended Novartis Pharmaceuticals' experimental therapy (CTL019) be approved for use in children and young adults whose leukemia doesn't respond to traditional treatments — approximately 600 patients per year in this country.