To accelerate breakthroughs, the Damon Runyon Foundation provides today's best young scientists with funds to pursue innovative cancer research.
- Today’s Promising Areas of Cancer Research
- What is Cancer?
- A Broken Pipeline?
A Generation of Science at Risk
- ARISE Report
Early Career Scientists and High-Risk, High Reward Research - American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Why We’re Losing the War on Cancer (And How To Win It)
Clifton Leaf - Fortune Magazine
December 12, 2008
Rafael Fonseca, MD (Damon Runyon-Lilly Clinical Investigator '00-'05) and colleagues at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, reported that a new combination of medications improved or stabilized multiple myeloma for 76 percent of patients who had relapsed after previous treatment. In interim results of an ongoing clinical trial evaluating pomalidomide, a new immunomodulatory agent, combined with dexamethasone (pom/dex), the researchers saw good results with less toxicity. Immunomodulatory drugs work by interfering with cancer cell growth and by stimulating the immune system to attack the cancer cells. The results were reported at the American Society of Hematology meeting.
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Robert H. Singer, PhD (Damon Runyon Fellow '70-'72) and colleagues at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, described a powerful new "single RNA counting" technique that allows individual mRNA molecules within single cells to be counted. This level of detail will help answer questions about how much of a gene is made over time and how much that level varies from cell to cell. This could advance the understanding of mechanisms that trigger cancer, which arises when gene regulation and function go awry. These findings were published in the journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology.