(AUSTIN) Today, the governing body of the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) approved $89 million through 22 grants to advance the state’s fight against cancer. The grants provide funding for a wide array of CPRIT Scholar recruitment awards, evidence-based prevention programs, and developmental research focusing on promising new treatments for cancer.
“The projects awarded today are a major step in our efforts to mitigate the effects of cancer in Texas,” said CPRIT CEO Kristen Doyle. “From bringing the best and brightest investigators to Texas, meaningful prevention efforts across Texas and funding the leading edge of innovation into new drugs and treatments, these awards reach the entire spectrum of cancer fighting efforts in Texas.”
The meeting also marked the 15th anniversary of CPRIT grant funding, with the first recruitment award made in November 2009 to bring Ralf Kittler, Ph.D. from the University of Chicago to The University of Texas Southwestern (UTSW) Medical Center.
Recruitment
Today, the Oversight Committee awarded five recruitment grants totaling $12 million to bring outstanding cancer researchers to Texas to work on a broad range of innovative, investigator-initiated research projects, drug discovery, and computational oncology and analytic methods. To date, the CPRIT Scholar recruitment program has brought 324 distinguished cancer investigators to Texas institutions.
In one example, UTSW received a $4 million CPRIT Rising Star Scholar Award to recruit Daniel Addison, M.D. from The Ohio State University. Dr. Addison is internationally recognized for his seminal work in the emerging field of cardio-oncology, which improves the understanding of the cardiovascular effects from targeted and immune-based cancer therapeutics and informs new approaches to prevent cardiovascular disease in cancer patients.
Prevention
CPRIT also approved $13.4 million for eight prevention programs providing cancer screening and early detection efforts in counties across Texas. These grants deliver evidence-based clinical services to screen for cancer and pre-cancer in underserved populations who do not have adequate access to cancer early detection programs and health care Prevention grants focus on programs that bring together networks of public health and community partners to carry out efforts tailored for their communities. To date, CPRIT has funded over 10 million prevention services and reached every county in Texas.
For example, The University of Texas at Austin and Jessica Calderon-Mora, DrPH, assistant professor in the Department of Medicine, received a $1 million grant to conduct an outpatient unhealthy alcohol use screening and intervention program to address the burden of alcohol-related cancers in Central Texas. Patients who are willing to reduce their alcohol consumption will establish one or two short-term goals with the interventionist and receive counseling on the link between alcohol and cancer. Dr. Calderon-Mora received two previous grants from CPRIT.
Innovative New Drugs and Treatments
The Oversight Committee also approved nine product development grants totaling $63.6 million for companies based in, or relocating to, Texas that are developing innovative new cancer-fighting drugs or treatments.
CPRIT approved a $4.75 million grant for Eisbach Bio, which will relocate from Munich, Germany, to Houston to develop EIS-12656, a small molecule ALC1 inhibitor targeting tumors with BRCA1/2 mutations, and other DNA damage repair gene mutations. This funding supports a Phase II clinical trial at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, focusing on homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) tumors. HRD occurs when a cell loses its ability to repair double-strand DNA breaks, leading to genomic alterations and instability that can contribute to cancerous tumor growth. CPRIT funding will support Eisbach’s transformative approach to HRD tumor therapy, positioning Texas as a hub for innovative cancer treatments while expanding clinical options for HRD patients.
During this last grant cycle, CPRIT’s Product Development Program achieved a record number of applications, with 90 companies seeking funding. Additionally, a record number of those applications proceeded to final review.
“The success in the CPRIT product development program highlights not only the need for funding that exists in this space, but also speaks to CPRIT’s stability as a funding source and the integrity of our review process,” said Doyle. “CPRIT is a strong catalyst for innovation in a state that is increasingly seen as a national leader for groundbreaking cancer research and development.”
Program Priorities
The Oversight Committee also approved the program priorities for the next year, a process that helps direct funding decisions and adds transparency to the grantmaking process. Since CPRIT first approved a list of priorities a decade ago, the agency can illustrate how grant awards have furthered goals like fighting childhood cancer, expanding access to clinical trials, funding novel projects that offer therapeutic benefits, and more.
You may view a complete list of CPRIT program priorities here.
Advisory Committee Reports
Navkiran K. Shokar, MA, MD, MPH, chair of the Prevention Advisory Committee, presented the committee’s annual report to the Oversight Committee. Dr. Shokar is a professor and chair of the Department of Population Health, Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin.
Min Kang, Pharm.D., vice-chair of the CPRIT Geographic Diversity Advisory Committee also presented her committee’s annual report. Dr. Kang is a Distinguished University Professor of Pediatrics at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine in Lubbock.
ABOUT CPRIT
Created by the Texas Legislature and approved by a statewide vote in 2007, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) leads the Lone Star State’s fight against cancer. In 2019, Texas voters again voted overwhelmingly to support CPRIT with an additional $3 billion, for a total $6 billion investment in cancer research and prevention.
To date, the agency has awarded more than $3.7 billion in grants to Texas research institutions and organizations through its academic research, prevention, and product development research programs. CPRIT has also recruited 324 distinguished researchers to Texas, supported the establishment, expansion, or relocation of 74 companies to Texas, and supported 10.1 million prevention services reaching all 254 counties in Texas.
The Governor, the Lieutenant Governor, and the Speaker of the House appoint the members of the Oversight Committee. The board meets at least once every quarter to set the priorities for the agency as well as vote on proposed, peer-reviewed cancer research and prevention grants to institutions, organizations, and companies throughout the state.
Once processed, video of the meeting will be available here: http://meeting.cprit.texas.gov
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CPRIT AWARDS
NOVEMBER 20, 2024
CPRIT Scholars
RR250002
The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
Norihiro Goto
$2,000,000
Recruited from Massachusetts Institute of Technology
RR250014
The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
Xufeng Chen
$2,000,000
Recruited from New York University
RR250017
The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Fangyu Liu
$2,000,000
Recruited from University of California, San Francisco
RR250048
The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Daniel Addison
$4,000,000
Recruited from The Ohio State University
RR250052
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
Xiangdong Lv
$2,000,000
Recruited from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
Prevention
PP250004
The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
Jennifer Minnix
$1,497,342
A Virtual, Centralized Lung Cancer Screening Program for Northeast Texas
PP250005
The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
Lewis Foxhall
$2,499,990
Project 80% Colorectal Cancer Screening Program
PP250006
The Rose
Jessica Duckworth
$2,500,000
Expansion of Cancer Screening and Early Detection Services to Rural & Medically Underserved Communities
PP250009
The University of Texas at Austin
Navkiran K. Shokar
$2,500,000
The Central Texas Colorectal Cancer Screening Program (CTX-CCSP)
PP250016
The University of Texas at Austin
Jessica Calderon-Mora
$1,000,000
Screening and treatment for unhealthy alcohol use for cancer prevention in Central Texas – 2
PP250018
Baylor College of Medicine
Roger Zoorob
$449,929
Texas Comprehensive Access & Resources for Early Lung Cancer Prevention (TEX-CARE)
PP250019
The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Keith E Argenbright
$1,499,243
Saved by the Scan: Lung Cancer Screening and Patient Navigation in East Texas
PP250046
The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
Abigail Zamorano
$1,499,997
The Houston Prevenir, Ayudar, Poder (PAP) Project
Product Development
DP250135
Metaclipse Therapeutics Corporation
Christopher Pack
$6,080,245
Personalized Immunotherapy for Recurrent, Resectable Head and Neck Cancer
DP250137
Ypsilon Therapeutics
Dongxing Zha
$2,727,500
Revolutionizing Solid Tumor Therapy with Bispecific TCRm Antibodies Targeting Intracellular Cancer Targets
DP250140
Orphagen Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Scott Thacher
$10,213,909
A Phase 1 clinical trial of OR-449, a novel oral targeted therapy for pediatric and adult adrenocortical cancer patients
DP250142
Eisbach Bio Inc.
Adrian Schomburg
$4,750,000
Clinical Development of the ALC1 DDR inhibitor EIS-12656
DP250143
Telos Biotechnology
Mohammed Sayed
$2,778,945
TELOVANCE: A Transient Telomere Lengthening Platform Designed to Enhance the Expansion and Efficacy of Human Cell and Gene Therapies
DP250149
Erisyon, Inc.
Jagannath Swaminathan
$2,157,173
Functional assay of immunoproteasome for patient stratification to checkpoint inhibitor therapy using single-molecule protein sequencing
DP250150
Marker Therapeutics, Inc.
Juan Vera
$9,513,569
A Phase 1 Study of Multi-Tumor Associated Antigen Specific T Cells (MT-601) in Patients with Metastatic Pancreatic Cancer following frontline FOLFIRINOX
DP250157
Curve Biosciences
Ritish Patnaik
$11,340,000
Clinical Utility Study for the Commercial Launch of a Best-in-Class Liver Cancer Screening Blood Test for High-Risk Liver Disease Patients
DP250159
Barricade Therapeutics, Corp.
Neil C Thapar
$14,005,035
(S)-TASIN-15 Phase 1 Dose Escalation, Optimization & RP2D Determination
To search grant information online, visit our grant database on our website.