AUSTIN — Today, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) awarded eight new academic research recruitment grants and a prevention dissemination grant totaling more than $30 million towards advancing the fight against cancer.

“CPRIT continues to attract the brightest minds in cancer research to Texas,” said Wayne Roberts, CPRIT Chief Executive Officer. “This investment further enhances research talent to our state institutions to escalate our fight against cancer. The prevention dissemination award is to expand a highly successful CPRIT-funded project to new areas of the state.”

CPRIT has awarded 1,255 grants totaling more than $1.98 billion. CPRIT is now past the two-thirds mark in the state’s historical 2007 constitutional commitment of $3 billion to fight cancer. During the 85th Texas Legislature, CPRIT’s Sunset Review date was extended by two years to 2023 to allow the agency to use fully all funds approved by Texas voters.

About the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas
 

To date, CPRIT has awarded $1.98 billion in grants to Texas researchers, institutions and organizations. CPRIT provides funding through its academic research, prevention, and product development research programs. Programs made possible with CPRIT funding have reached Texans from all 254 counties of the state, brought more than 154 distinguished researchers to Texas, advanced scientific and clinical knowledge, and provided more than 4.5 million life-saving education, training, prevention and early detection services to Texans. Learn more at cprit.texas.gov. Follow CPRIT at twitter.com/CPRITTexas and facebook.com/CPRITTexas.

AWARDED RESEARCH GRANTS

Recruitment of Established Investigator Awards* — Four grants totaling $21,986,494

  • Michael Sheetz, PhD, Recruitment to The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston from National University of Singapore — $6,000,000
  • Patrick Sung, DPhil, Recruitment to The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio from Yale University — $6,000,000
  • Xinshu Xiao, PhD, Recruitment to Baylor College of Medicine from the University of California, Los Angeles — $4,000,000
  • Qing Yi, MD, PhD, Recruitment to The Methodist Hospital Research Institute from the Lerner Research Institute, Cleveland Clinic — $5,986,494

Recruitment of First-Time, Tenure-Track Faculty Members Awards* — Four grants totaling $8,000,000

  • John Shen, MD, Recruitment to The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center from the University of California, San Diego — $2,000,000
  • Stephen Chung, MD, Recruitment to The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center — $2,000,000
  • John Powers, PhD, Recruitment to The University of Texas at Austin from Boston Children's Hospital — $2,000,000
  • Samira Musah, PhD, Recruitment to Rice University from Harvard University — $2,000,000

*Recruitment grants awarded indicate only approval to negotiate offers; at the time of release candidates have not accepted offers.

AWARDED PREVENTION GRANTS

Dissemination of CPRIT-Funded Cancer Control Interventions Awards — One grant totaling $300,000

Texas A&M University

  • Training CHWs to disseminate culturally competent, family health historyñbased cancer prevention and navigation services among Chinese Americans (Lei-Shih Chen) — $300,000
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