ASPIRE grants double over previous year; Mark Foundation’s global outreach expands to Australia, Sweden, and Spain
The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research has selected twenty-five outstanding scientific research projects to receive 2021 ASPIRE Awards. Grantees leading these ASPIRE projects, from top academic institutions in seven countries including Australia, France, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, UK, and USA, were awarded a total of nearly $9 million for their innovative and bold ideas across a spectrum of cancer research disciplines. These are the first Mark Foundation grants in Australia, Sweden, and Spain, as the organization continues to expand its global outreach.
The ASPIRE (Accelerating Scientific Platforms and Innovative Research) program enables innovative approaches to solving impactful problems in cancer research. These awards support high-risk, high-reward projects that aim to answer key feasibility and proof-of-concept questions in an accelerated timeframe, typically one year. Projects that successfully demonstrate feasibility may be selected to apply for additional funding in a second phase.
Ryan Schoenfeld, The Mark Foundation Chief Scientific Officer and Interim CEO, said, “As The Mark Foundation increases our financial commitment to tackling the greatest challenges in cancer, we are excited to expand the reach of our ASPIRE awards program in both number of grants and global outreach. Congratulations to all the ASPIRE grantees.”
The Mark Foundation’s new class of ASPIRE Awards are:
Steven Altschuler, PhD, Lani Wu, PhD, and Xiaoxiao Sun, PhD, University of California, San Francisco, USA, A platform for identification of druggable targets of cancer persisters to mitigate tumor recurrence
Jessica Blackburn, PhD, University of Kentucky, USA, Characterization of a novel endothelial network in normal and cancerous tissues
Arvin Dar, PhD, and Ernesto Guccione, PhD, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, USA, Target and Anti-Target Identification of Novel Lead Compounds from a Chemical Genetic Organoid Platform
Kara Davis, DO, Stanford University, USA, Deep Neural Network Prediction of Relapse in Pediatric Acute Leukemia
Ross Dickins, PhD, Monash University, Australia, Preventing relapse following acute myeloid leukemia differentiation therapy
Ronald Evans, PhD and Dannielle Engle, PhD, Salk Institute for Biological Studies, USA, Aberrant glycosylation and altered FXR activity converge to drive PDA progression
Shom Goel, PhD, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, University of Melbourne, Australia, Novel mouse models to accelerate the development of tailored senotherapeutics
Hani Goodarzi, PhD, University of California, San Francisco, Leveraging oncRNAs to derive blood-accessible QR codes for human cancers
Benjamin Greenbaum, PhD, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, USA, Bridging predictive models and precision immunotherapies
Stephen Jackson, PhD, Wellcome/ Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, UK, CRISPR screens for new cancer targets and therapeutic opportunities
Guido Kroemer, MD, PhD, Inserm, Université de Paris, Sorbonne Université, Centre de Recherche des Cordeliers, Paris, France, Impact of formyl peptide receptor 1 (FPR1) on anticancer immunosurveillance
Pia Kvistborg, PhD, and William Faller, PhD, The Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI), Netherlands, The role of ribosomal heterogeneity in T cell recognition of tumor cells
Bennie Lemmens, PhD, and Jiri Bartek, MD, PhD, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, Direct visualization and control of DNA replication kinetics in single cells and cancer tissues by X-MARK
Arnold Levine, PhD, Institute for Advanced Study, USA, The Adaptive and innate Immune Responses to Inherited Tp53 breast cancers in Li-Fraumeni
Nuria Lopez-Bigas, PhD, IRB Barcelona, Spain, Discovering the mechanisms of tumorigenesis by driver mutations across tissues
Ignacio Melero, MD, PhD, Clínica Universidad de Navarra, Spain, Interleukin-8 and neutrophil extracellular traps as actionable target and biomarkers for cancer immunotherapy
Justin Perry, PhD, and Kayvan Keshari, PhD, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, USA, Development and implementation of spatial MALDI MS imaging-based methods for in situ single cell metabolomics analysis of the tumor microenvironment
Claire Roddie, MD, PhD, and Tariq Enver, PhD, University College London, UK, T-cell reprogramming: a strategy to ‘super-charge’ TIL therapy for cancer
Davide Ruggero, PhD, University of California, San Francisco, USA, The role of estrogen receptor alpha in a novel post-transcriptional program underlying breast cancer
Erik Sahai, PhD, Francis Crick Institute, UK, Development and implementation of multiparameter topological data analysis to study extracellular matrix patterning and its relationship to the cellular tumor environment in lung cancer
Kirsty Spalding, PhD, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, Targeting fat cells to reduce breast cancer progression and metastasis in humans
Brendon Stiles, MD, Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Health System, USA, Targeting the ART1-P2X7R-CD38 axis for cancer immunotherapy
Charles Swanton, MD, PhD, Francis Crick Institute, UK, Environmental Exposures and Normal Tissue Somatic Evolution (EXPANSE)
Manuel Valiente, DVM, PhD, Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Oncológicas (CNIO), Spain, Deconstructing the biology of local relapse post-surgery to develop novel preventive strategies in brain metastasis
Jun Wang, PhD, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, USA, Targeting Antigen Presentation Inhibitors for Immunotherapy of Cancer
The ASPIRE Awards program is one of The Mark Foundation’s various funding programs, both independent and in collaboration with partner organizations. All grant submissions undergo rigorous peer review and are held to the strictest standards of scientific excellence. For more information on The Mark Foundation’s funding programs visit https://themarkfoundation.org/research-programs/.