Five alumni were elected to the National Academy of Medicine, bringing the total number of Damon Runyon scientists who are members to 37. Membership is considered to be one of the highest honors in the medical field and recognizes individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement and commitment to service.  

Six months after laboratories were shuttered due to COVID-19, most of our affected Damon Runyon scientists have restarted their research with limited hours in the lab. Often, this means working in shifts either early mornings, late nights, or on weekends to maintain social distancing guidelines.

When Anthony and Lauren Terebetsky took their 7-year-old son, Ryan, to the hospital for blood tests, they were thinking about dinner, Ryan’s homework, their daughter starting spring softball, his job at the firehouse and hers as a teacher—not a life changing diagnosis.

Former Damon Runyon Innovator Guillem Pratx, PhD, and colleagues at Stanford University have devised a way to use a common imaging technology called positron emission tomography, or PET, to watch the movement of a single cell injected into a laboratory mouse in real time. 

In developing a treatment plan for a patient, doctors rely on genetic tests on biopsied tumors in bulk rather than individual cells, which fails to capture the full extent of cellular diversity within tumors. A more complete picture of what is happening in a lung cancer tumor could yield clues for effective therapies that may benefit patients. 

Seven Damon Runyon scientists are recipients of the National Institutes of Health's High-Risk, High-Reward Research awards that will fund highly innovative and unusually impactful biomedical research proposed by extraordinarily creative scientists.

Though the Runyon 5K, like so many things, looked a little different this year than it has in the past, participants were undaunted by the transition to a virtual race. Between August 24 and October 4, more than 450 participants walked, ran, hiked, or biked a 5K along a course of their choosing to raise funds and awareness for the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation.

Damon Runyon Fellow Tikvah K. Hayes, PhD, of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, discusses the importance of creating a more diverse environment in STEM careers so that the next generation of under represented researchers will have mentors and colleagues who can better guide them through their shared experiences.

Lung cancer is often missed in its earlier stages and, as a result, is the leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. To tackle this issue, Damon Runyon Fellow Aaron L. Moye, PhD, and colleagues have developed a platform to study early-stage lung cancer and to identify potential new treatments. 

Faster, cheaper diagnostic tests for COVID-19 could potentially help control the spread of disease and facilitate safe openings of schools and businesses. Former Damon Runyon Innovator Feng Zhang, PhD, and colleagues have developed a CRISPR-based diagnostic for COVID-19 that gives accurate results in less than an hour and, in principle, could be made inexpensively to allow for regular testing at home.