Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation awards prestigious fellowships to 17 top young inv...( New York NY-- The Damon Runyon Cance...)

New York, NY-- The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation named 17 new Damon Runyon Fellows at its November 2007 Scientific Advisory 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 programs inception.

2007 Damon Runyon Fellows

1. Lu Bai, PhD, with her sponsors Frederick R. Cross, PhD, and Eric D. Siggia, PhD, at The Rockefeller University, New York, New York, is investigating key features in promoter architecture and chromatin structure that govern the transcription of cell cycle-regulated genes, which is an important issue in understanding general cancer mechanisms.

2. Eric J. Bennett, PhD, with his sponsor J. Wade Harper, PhD, at Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, is utilizing rational high-throughput screening to identify new components within the cellular degradation machinery that control the abundance of the prominent tumor suppressor protein, PTEN. The goal is to identify new proteins that cooperate with known cancer causing proteins to initiate oncogenesis.

3. Jelena Bezbradica, PhD, with her sponsor Ruslan M. Medzhitov, PhD, at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, is investigating mechanisms underlying generation of effective T cell immune responses. T cells are responsible for tumor immune surveillance in our body and, hence, can be employed for the generation of novel anti-tumor immunotherapies.

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