The new award will fund investigation into a method for turning a tumor survival mechanism into a Trojan Horse
Cosimo Commisso, PhD, was awarded a one-year, $110,000 Lustgarten Foundation grant to support his lab’s pancreatic cancer research. The award is part of the foundation’s August 2026 announcement of $22.8 million in new research funding in fiscal year 2026.
The Lustgarten Foundation’s support will aid the Commisso lab’s study of how pancreatic cancer adapts as nearby nutrients vanish. Because they expand quickly, pancreatic tumors demand more energy and other resources than they can acquire from nearby blood vessels.
Rather than limiting their growth to more sustainable rates, these cancer cells adapt by finding alternative ways to scavenge what they need. One scrounging strategy prevalent in pancreatic cancer involves cancer cells reshaping their cell surfaces to snatch extra nutrients from the jelly-like substance between cells or extracellular matrix.
This cellular contortion is a process called macropinocytosis. In previous research, Commisso has shown that blocking it cuts tumors off from needed energy and protein building blocks. This, in turn, suppresses tumor growth by essentially starving the tumor.
The new funding will support the lab’s effort to flip the script on this strategy. Instead of blocking macropinocytosis, the scientists will test turning up the knob on a tumor’s voracious appetite for scavenging to cause it to self-destruct from overconsumption. This approach also may be able to force cancer cells to take in more chemotherapeutic molecules, which can struggle to penetrate the dense and fibrotic tumor microenvironment.
“This project has the potential to turn one of pancreatic cancer’s greatest survival tools into a Trojan Horse,” said Commisso.
“Support from organizations like the Lustgarten Foundation encourages us to ask fundamentally new questions in the pursuit of better therapies.”
With the fiscal year 2026 awards, the Lustgarten Foundation has invested $333 million in pancreatic cancer research across 386 projects at 86 academic institutions since 1998. As the world’s largest private funder of pancreatic cancer research, the foundation drives scientific breakthroughs that are redefining what is possible for patients and bringing the field closer than ever to the goal of transforming pancreatic cancer into a curable disease.