The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has awarded a UM1 grant renewal to Yale Cancer Center (YCC). The 6-year, $3 million a year grant will fund early phase investigator-initiated clinical trials to develop new potential therapies for treating both solid tumors and hematologic malignancies. The grant supports the NCI’s Experimental Therapeutics Clinical Trials Network (ETCTN), whose purpose is to encourage early phase clinical trials of innovative cancer therapeutics.
“We have had an explosion of investigator-initiated research here at Yale in the last several years,” said Patricia LoRusso, DO, UM1 Principal Investigator, Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology) and Associate Cancer Center Director of Experimental Therapeutics at YCC. “The UM1 grant has been a significant nidus for this explosion and its renewal will continue to provide critical support for institutional clinical research and will also continue to help promote mentoring of junior investigators to bring these projects to fruition. The exemplar team that worked on this grant and helped bring this consortium together should be commended.”
The original UM1 NCI grant funding to YCC was awarded in 2014 and launched more than a dozen new clinical trials at Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale New Haven. The grants are highly competitive. Nationwide, the grant was awarded to 8 institutions, which then partner have partnered overall with 34 other academic sites to create research collaborations and to recruit patients to ETCTN clinical trials. Yale’s partner sites include Oklahoma University, Vanderbilt University, Columbia University, Washington University, and the University of California at San Diego.