Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation awards prestigious fellowships to 13 top young inv...( New York NY-- The Damon Runyon Cance...)

New York, NY-- The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation named 13 new Damon Runyon Fellows at its November 2008 Fellowship Award Committee review. The recipients of this prestigious, three-year award are outstanding postdoctoral scientists conducting basic and translational cancer research in the laboratories of leading senior investigators across the country. The Fellowship is specifically intended to encourage the nation's most promising young investigators to pursue careers in cancer research by providing them with independent funding to work on innovative projects. The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation has committed more than $200 million to support the careers of cancer researchers across the United States since the program's inception.

November 2008 Damon Runyon Fellows:

• Christopher S. Campbell, PhD, with his sponsor Arshad B. Desai, PhD, at the University of California, San Diego, California, is studying regulatory mechanisms that prevent instability of the genome. His research will aid in our understanding of how disruption of these processes can lead to cancer.

• Oscar R. Colegio, MD, PhD, with his sponsor Ruslan M. Medzhitov, PhD, at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, is studying the role of immune cells called macrophages in tumor progression and metastasis (cancer spread). His goal is to identify and characterize molecular pathways critical to metastatic cancers, particularly lung, breast, and skin cancers. These studies may lead to novel therapeutic targets to limit or prevent metastasis.

• Jason Michael Crawford, PhD, with his sponsor Jon Clardy, PhD, at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, is developing DNA-based methods to discover novel compounds from microbes, such as bacteria and fungi, towards the development of improved anticancer therapeutics.

• William J. Greenleaf, PhD, with his sponsor X. Sunney Xie, PhD, at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachuse
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