Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey Receives Grants to Support Ongoing Oncology Research

Eileen White, PhD

Grants totaling $1.5 million have been awarded by the New Jersey Commission on Cancer Research (NJCCR) to several investigators at Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey, the state’s only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center together with RWJBarnabas Health. NJCCR is the state’s only Commission that promotes significant and original research in New Jersey into the causes, prevention, treatment and palliation of cancer and serves as a resource to providers and consumers of cancer services.

“Investing in cancer research is vital, as seminal discoveries in the laboratory translate to cancer treatments of the future. As New Jersey’s only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center, Rutgers Cancer Institute is committed to mentoring the next generation of investigators so that we may learn more about the underlying mechanisms of cancer,” notes Rutgers Cancer Institute Deputy Director and Chief Scientific Officer Eileen White, PhD, who is also a Board of Governors Professor of molecular biology and biochemistry at Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences. She is also associate director of the Ludwig Princeton Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at Princeton University. “We’re incredibly grateful to the New Jersey Commission on Cancer Research for its continued support and sharing in our mission.”

The following investigators received Pilot Awards:

• Brett Ecker, MD; Subhajyoti De, PhD - ($200,000)—Project: Evaluation of the tumor-microbiome-immune interactions in malignant progression of pancreatic cysts 
• Racquel ‘Kelly’ Kohler, PhD, MSPH - ($182,495)—Project: Preparing for implementation: a mixed methods study for anal cancer screening

The following investigators received a Post-Doctoral Fellowship Award in the amount of $200,000 each:

• Amartya Singh, PhD - Mentor: Daniel Herranz Benito, PharmD, PhD - Project: Development of a novel single-cell transcriptomics analysis toolkit
• Jianming Wang, PhD - Mentor: Wenwei Hu, PhD - Project: Targeting intestinal epithelium-immune cell crosstalk in colorectal cancer
• Jie Liu, PhD - Mentor: Zhaohui Feng, PhD - Project: The mechanism of SUMO-specific protease 6 in cancer
• Mona Arabzadeh, PhD - Mentor: Shridar Ganesan, MD, PhD - Project: Integrated analysis of imbalanced allelic expression to infer gene regulatory patterns

The following investigators received a Pre-Doctoral Fellowship Award in the amount of $100,000 each:

• Chadni Patel, BA - Mentor: Peter Cole, MD - Project: Investigating genetic susceptibility for chemotherapy-induced cognitive impairment
• Kyle Nunn, BS - Mentor: Yanxiang Jessie Guo, PhD - Project: Detailing KRAS/LKB1 co-mutated NSCLC metastatic dependency on host autophagy
• Komal Mandleywala, BA, MA - Mentor: Daniel Herranz Benito, PharmD, PhD - Project: Dissecting OTUD5 as a novel therapeutic target in leukemia

The award period runs through 2025.