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Pilot Grant Program 2021

In its inaugural year, the UMass Cancer Center Pilot Project Program, together with the Population and Quantitative Health Sciences Cancer-Focused Pilot Project Program, collectively awarded funds to five projects. Although the funding announcements for these awards were completely open, four of the funded awards involved collaborations between two different investigators, which speaks to the collaborative nature of the institution and the Cancer Center.

UMass Cancer Center Pilot Project Program

In 2021, this Program awarded funds for three projects:

Does intra‐tumoral injection of AIM2 siRNA enhance the response of immune checkpoint inhibitor for melanoma?

PIs: John Harris, MD, PhD, and Anastasia Khvorova, PhD

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Using single-cell chromatin profiling to uncover epigenetic vulnerabilities of triple-negative breast cancer

PI: Thomas Fazzio, PhD

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Nanoparticle delivery of innate immune agonists to remodel the tumor microenvironment and potentiate T cell-activating therapies in PDAC

PIs: Marcus Ruscetti, PhD, and Prabhani Atukorale, PhD

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Population and Quantitative Health Sciences Cancer-Focused Pilot Project Program

This program was initiated by the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences to provide funding for cancer-focused projects. Funding for these pilot projects was provided by the UMass Cancer Center, the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences, and the National Cancer Institute (through a multi-center P50 grant iDAPT: Implementation and Informatics – Developing Adaptable Processes and Technologies for Cancer Control).

In 2021, two projects were funded through this program:

Developing computational methods of genome-wide detection of fusion circular RNAs in chronic myeloid leukemia

PIs: Chan Zhou, PhD, and Minggang Fang, PhD

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Using psychophysiological technology to develop a mood-tailored intervention for smoking cessation (Adapt2YourMood)

PIs: Rajani Sadasivam, PhD, and Elise Stevens, PhD

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