The fight against cancer demands relentless innovation. Yet, progress is too often incremental, hindered by research silos that limit collaboration and the cross-pollination of ideas.
The Mark Foundation Endeavor Awards program exists to break down those barriers, giving multidisciplinary teams the freedom and flexibility to explore complex challenges through diverse lenses.
Since 2021, the Mark Foundation has granted 11 Endeavor Awards totaling over $40 million in funding. Grantee teams, some of which span multiple countries, have applied their combined expertise to produce or enable numerous high-impact journal articles, patented inventions, and interventional clinical trials.
Two new Endeavor Awards—each worth $3 million over three years—build on this momentum, bringing together talented researchers to tackle critical questions in cancer research.
The Endeavor Award Recipients:
Decoding the Dynamic Interplay between Hepatic Metabolism, the Nervous System, and Immune Responses in Cancer Cachexia
Ayelet Erez, MD, PhD and Steffen Jung, PhD, Weizmann Institute of Science
Asya Rolls, PhD, Tel Aviv University
Keren Yizhak, PhD, Technion
Cancer-associated cachexia, a debilitating and potentially fatal syndrome marked by severe weight loss and muscle wasting, affects most patients with advanced cancer — yet it remains poorly understood.
This Endeavor Award aims to address the urgent need for a deeper understanding of cancer-associated cachexia by testing the hypothesis that it results from dysregulated communication between the autonomic nervous system, the immune system, and liver metabolism. The project team, which includes experts in neuroimmunology, computational immunology, and cancer metabolism, will leverage advanced models and cutting-edge technologies to dissect these complex interactions at the molecular, cellular, and systemic levels. Ultimately, they hope to uncover new therapeutic targets for cachexia. Additionally, they will develop comprehensive datasets and computational tools that they will share publicly to foster further collaboration and progress in this critical area of cancer research.
Full Spectrum Genetic Engineering of CAR T-Cells for Gastric Cancer
Julia Carnevale, MD, Justin Eyquem, PhD, Alexander Marson, MD, PhD, Kole Roybal, PhD, and Gregory Allen, MD, PhD, University of California San Francisco
Karin Pelka, PhD, Gladstone Institutes
Gastrointestinal (GI) cancers are a group of cancers with high incidence and mortality rates in the United States and are quickly becoming more prevalent around the world, yet they remain notoriously difficult to treat. Gastric cancer is one of the more lethal GI cancers, with extremely low survival rates in the advanced stages and few treatment options. Recent therapeutic advancements, such as CAR T-cell therapy, have not yet become broadly successful in gastric cancer, in part because of limited targets and a challenging tumor microenvironment.
This Endeavor Award aims to overcome these challenges by developing enhanced CAR T-Cell therapies and identifying novel targets so that these therapies can be used for more patients. The research team, which comprises experts in oncology, cancer immunology, genetic engineering, synthetic biology, and functional genomics, will apply cutting-edge approaches from each discipline. Their findings could lead to more effective, long-lasting immunotherapies, potentially revolutionizing treatment options and improving outcomes for gastric cancer patients. This award, alongside the Center for Lineage Plasticity and three new ASPIRE awards, comes as part of a joint effort between The Mark Foundation and the Torrey Coast Foundation to drive meaningful progress in the diagnosis and treatment of upper gastrointestinal cancers.
Learn more about The Mark Foundation’s Endeavor Awards program.