Hillman Cancer Center Director's Discovery Fund
The UPMC Hillman Cancer Center Director’s Discovery Fund was established in 2018 to stimulate innovative research across all types of cancer and science, with a particular focus on areas of strategic importance. This program provides critical resources to UPMC Hillman and University of Pittsburgh researchers and helps to advance promising, novel research projects.
Why are donations necessary?
Gifts to the Director’s Discovery Fund help support two types of awards: Pilot Awards and Team Science Awards. Pilot Awards provide up to $50,000 for one year for highly innovative, cancer-relevant research. Team Science Awards provide research teams up to $100,000 per year for up to two years to enhance efforts to generate data for the development of large, multi-project grant applications. Preliminary data generated from funded pilot projects has resulted in multiple publications and grants from external agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Defense. Since its inception, pilots supported by the Director’s Discovery Fund have yielded a 6.7-fold return on investment. Every dollar counts to get these research programs off the ground!
In the past, the Director’s Discovery Fund supported several groundbreaking projects such as:
Robert Binder, PhD: Combinatorial heat shock protein / checkpoint blockade for immunotherapy of osteosarcoma
Anette Duensing, MD, and Jan Beumer, PhD: Dissecting DNA damage and repair pathways in leiomyosarcomas: improving therapy by understanding biology
Gary Kohanbash, PhD: ImmunoPET quantification of lymphocyte cytotoxicity as an early indicator of immunotherapy response for gliomas
Jianhua Xing, PhD, and Jian Yu, PhD: CRISPR-enabled tracking of cancer cell chromosome instability and karyotype landscape evolution
Yi-Nan Gong, PhD: CRL3KEAP1 complex licenses genotoxic stressinduced tumor cell death
Kazunori Koide, PhD, and John Schmitz, PhD: Modulators of alternative splicing to resensitize drug-resistant colon cancer
Rodney O’Sullivan, PhD: Investigating HIRA-mediated epigenetic reprogramming that drives the metastasis of ATRX mutated cancers
Pradeep Tyagi, PhD: Early detection of aggressive prostate cancer by MRI-based permeability assay
Christopher Bakkenist, PhD, Greg Delgoffe, PhD, and Lawrence Kane, PhD: DNA damage response and cancer immunity (Team Science)
Kelly Bailey, MD, PhD, and Moses Bility, PhD: A humanized rat femur model for the study of pediatric Ewing sarcoma immunobiology
Riyue Bao, PhD, and Jason Luke, MD: Tumor and gut microbiota correlates of the tumor-immune microenvironment in melanoma
Adrian Lee, PhD, and Steffi Oesterreich, PhD: Promotion of ER+ breast cancer in elderly patients by the aged breast microenvironment
Francesmary Modugno, MS, PhD, MPH: The microbiome and ovarian cancer outcomes
Shandong Wu, PhD: Deep learning to reduce unnecessary biopsy in breast cancer screening
Anders Josefsson, PhD: Pharmacokinetic variability of vector labeled Actinium-225 and its unbound free α-particle emitting decay daughters in targeted alpha particle therapy (TAT)
Hayeon Kim, PhD: Women with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) of the breast: treatments and preferences
Jason Lohmueller, PhD: Engineering synthetic intercellular communication to augment adoptive cell therapy
Hyun Jung Park, PhD: Computational approaches to predict benefit and identify driver genes for the anti-PD-1 and fecal microbiota transplantation strategy for melanoma patients
Pascal Zinn, MD, PhD: An interplay of social and genetic factors contributes to glioblastoma health disparities