Ten scientists at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute were awarded eight grants yesterday from Curebound, a San Diego-based philanthropic organization that raises and invests funds in promising cancer research to accelerate development of treatments.
The grants were part of 23 awards totaling $8.5 million.
“Curebound identified these recipients based on their scientific strengths and ability to translate research breakthroughs into life-saving treatments quickly,” said Curebound’s Chief Science Advisor Ezra Cohen, MD.
“We are grateful to the scientists nationwide who volunteered to evaluate hundreds of grant applications to select these 23 exciting cancer studies.”
Receiving $500,000 Curebound Targeted grants at Sanford Burnham Prebys were:
- Steven Olson, PhD, executive director of medicinal chemistry, with collaborator Dan Theodorescu, MD, PhD, at the University of Arizona for “discovery of NPEPPS inhibitors for the treatment of muscle-invasive bladder cancer.”
- Anne Bang, PhD, director of cell biology at the Conrad Prebys Center for Chemical Genomics, part of Sanford Burnham Prebys, Eric Wang, PhD, assistant professor in the Center for Therapeutics Discovery, and collaborators at the University of California San Diego for “overcoming K-ras inhibitor resistance in PDAC.”
- Charles Spruck, PhD, associate professor in the NCI-Designated Cancer Center, Angela Liou, MD, instructor in the Cancer Genome and Epigenetics Program, Eduard Sergienko, PhD, director of assay development at the Prebys Center and Jon Covel, PhD, senior scientist, for “therapeutic targeting of the immunomodulator FBXO44 in cancer.”
Target grants support research projects deemed closer to clinical stages and which require interdisciplinary collaboration geared toward translational application.
Receiving one-time Curebound Discovery seed grants for early-phase studies requiring inter-institutional collaboration and with the potential to open new frontiers in cancer science were:
- Kelly Kersten, PhD, assistant professor in the NCI-Designated Cancer Center, with Christina Towers, PhD, at The Salk Institute for “elucidating how tumor mitochondrial transfer affects macrophage function in cancer.”
- Maximiliano D’Angelo, PhD, associate professor in the NCI-Designated Cancer Center, Susanne Heyen-Genel, PhD, director of high content imaging platforms at the Prebys Center and Hatim Husain, MD, at UC San Diego for “modulating Nup37 for novel cancer therapies.”
- Xueqin Sun, PhD, assistant professor at the NCI-Designated Cancer Center, Eduard Sergienko, PhD, and Frank Furnari, PhD, at UC San Diego for “targeting a novel epigenetic vulnerability in glioblastoma.”
- Lukas Chavez, PhD, associated professor at the NCI-Designated Cancer Center, and Susanne Heyen-Genel, PhD, with Megan Paul, MD, at Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego for “targeting ecDNA in high-risk medulloblastoma: A high-throughput assay to discover novel therapeutic probes.”
- Ian Pass, PhD, director of high throughput screening at the Prebys Center, with collaborators at UC San Diego for “targeting MICAL2 for pancreatic cancer therapy.”
“These Curebound grants recognize a mix of well-developed research on the cusp of clinical impact and exciting early innovations,” said Paul C. Boutros, PhD, MBA, director of the NCI-Designated Cancer Center at Sanford Burnham Prebys. “We are so proud of our investigators for their creativity and leadership in cancer research, and grateful for the support of Curebound.”
A complete list of 2025 Curebound research grant recipients can be found here.