T. Rinda Soong (left), assistant professor of pathology, and Shikhar Uttam (right), assistant professor of computational and systems biology, both in the School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, are among 16 research teams awarded $35 million in funding over three years to study new approaches for prevention, early detection and interception of BRCA-related cancers, the Gray Foundation announced June 30. These are cancers that develop as a result of a harmful mutation in either the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene. The grants bring the total BRCA giving by Mindy and Jon Gray to more than $235 million.
Soong and Uttam plan to develop a first-of-its kind nanoscale characterization and three-dimensional (3D) atlas of the full spectrum of ovarian high-grade serous carcinoma (HGSC) precursors. By leveraging innovative computational methods, their team will develop a 3D reconstruction that integrates morphologic, microenvironmental and transcriptomic data to identify key drivers associated with precursor progression to HGSC, and to achieve quantified understanding of the nuclear and microenvironmental evolution of tubal precursors—lesions in the fallopian tube—during tumorigenesis.
The new grants are part of the foundation’s ongoing Team Science program, which funds innovative BRCA-related collaborative research. The foundation has now given more than $100 million to support this program. For this cycle, the research teams were selected from more than 85 applications through an extensive evaluation led by Chi Van Dang, chief science advisor for the Gray Foundation, supported by a review committee of experts in the field.
“The teams selected by the foundation are taking innovative, multidisciplinary approaches to the toughest questions in the field,” Dang said. “We were highly impressed with the caliber of proposals we received this year and are confident that the selected research proposals will have a meaningful impact in the prevention, interception and early detection of BRCA-associated cancers.”