News

New Discoveries April 26, 2018

Progress toward a noninvasive brain tumor biopsy

Gavin Dunn, MD, PhD (Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator '17-'20), and colleagues at Washington University in St. Louis, are developing a way to detect brain tumor biomarkers through a simple blood test. Taking a biopsy of a brain tumor is a complicated and invasive surgical process. The new groundbreaking, proof-of-concept technique allows biomarkers from a brain tumor to pass through the tough blood-brain barrier into a patient's blood using noninvasive focused ultrasound and some tiny bubbles, potentially eliminating the need for a surgical biopsy.

New Discoveries April 23, 2018

New imaging method shows how normal and cancer cells move

Benjamin L. Martin, PhD (Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovator ’17-’18) and David Q. Matus, PhD (Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovator ’17-’18, Damon Runyon Fellow '07-'10) of Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, and colleagues, have developed new cell imaging technology that allows scientists investigating cancer and other diseases insights into how cells operate in real-time. This is the first time high-resolution, three-dimensional footage of the process has been visualized in action.

Honors and Awards March 21, 2018

Physician-Scientists are Driven to Find Cures

Who better to understand the urgent needs of cancer patients for new treatments and push that research in the lab? Physician-scientists, who are experts in both front-line care and cutting-edge science. Yet, fewer MDs are going into research because the career path is challenging and the remuneration lower than clinical practice. The Damon Runyon Physician-Scientist Training Award seeks to reverse that trend by recruiting newly-minted MDs into research careers and providing them with the mentorship and funding they need to succeed, including help repaying medical school loans.

New Discoveries March 5, 2018

New understanding of breast cancer metastasis

The most deadly process in cancer is metastasis, when tumor cells spread to distant organs. Key to preventing metastasis is understanding how these cells are able to move through the body. Carey K. Anders, MD (Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator ’12-’15) of the University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, Chapel Hill, is shedding light on this process using genetic “snapshots” of both the primary tumor and the tumor after it has spread.

New Discoveries March 1, 2018

Childhood and adult cancers are not equal

Two new studies confirm that pediatric and adult cancers have different mechanisms driving the disease. These are the first large-scale genomic comparisons, combing through the genomes of more than 1,700 tumors, from over 20 different kinds of childhood cancers. Daniela S. Gerhard, PhD (Damon Runyon Fellow ’83-’85) of NCI, Bethesda, and Angela J. Waanders, MD, MPH (Dale F. Frey Breakthrough Scientist ’15-’17, Damon Runyon-Sohn Pediatric Cancer Fellow ‘12-‘15) of Chilidren’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, contributed to these studies.

New Discoveries February 19, 2018

Damon Runyon Scientists Featured in The New York Times

The big story in cancer research is the recent success of immunotherapy, which involves training and reengineering the immune system to kill cancers. The New York Times featured four women whose rare, aggressive ovarian cancers were unexpectedly cured with immunotherapy. This story resulted from research by Dmitriy Zamarin, MD, PhD (Damon Runyon Fellow '13-'16) of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, who studied these patients to understand why they responded to this treatment (nivolumab/Opdivo). In addition, two other Damon Runyon alumni were featured.

Honors and Awards February 4, 2018

World Cancer Day – We All Have a Stake in Finding Cures

Our lives and the lives of future generations depend on it. Today is World Cancer Day. A day to reflect on the good news about progress against cancer and the challenges that lie ahead.

The good news is that, thanks to cancer research being conducted across the globe, real progress is being made in cancer prevention, early diagnosis and treatment. Cancer deaths in the U.S. have dropped 26% from 1991 to 2015, saving nearly 3 million lives. The pace of development of new therapies is accelerating rapidly thanks to new understanding of what causes and drives cancers. The challenge is that the world cancer burden is expanding rapidly due to the growth and aging of the population.

New Discoveries February 1, 2018

2018 Laura Ziskin Prize in Translational Research

Helen M. Piwnica-Worms, PhD (Damon Runyon Fellow ’84-’85, Former Fellowship Award Committee Member) of MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, received the 2018 Laura Ziskin Prize in Translational Research from Stand Up to Cancer. She and her collaborator will apply their expertise in DNA damage repair mechanisms and imaging mass cytometry to investigate how the immune system recognizes breast cancer and devise new treatment combinations for more effective treatments.

New Discoveries January 31, 2018

2018 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science

Feng Zhang, PhD (Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovator ‘12-‘14) of the Broad Institute and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, was named one of three recipients of the 2018 Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science. The awards from the Vilcek Foundation recognize young foreign-born biomedical scientists, 38 years old or younger, who demonstrate outstanding early achievement. He is recognized for his groundbreaking work in the field of CRISPR genome editing.

New Discoveries January 31, 2018

Cancer ‘vaccine’ eliminates tumors in mice

Ron Levy, MD (Emeritus Board Member), and colleagues at Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, reported the success of an injectable "vaccine" delivered directly to tumors. The vaccine combines two key agents, a short piece of DNA called CpG oligonucleotide with an antibody that binds to OX40, thus activating immune T cells to fight cancer cells. In mice, they found that it could eliminate all traces of the injected tumors, including untreated metastases in the same animal. A human clinical trial in low-grade lymphoma patients is currently underway.

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