The CARE Board has awarded over $10 million in the first cycle of Scientific Discoveries Research grants.

The Scientific Discoveries Research grant opportunity seeks to support innovative and meritorious cancer researchers and teams pursuing scientific discoveries and breakthrough ideas in the fight against cancer. This opportunity will not only catalyze the next breakthroughs in cancer research but also may help bridge early discoveries and commercialization of therapeutics, devices, and tools to lessen the burden of cancer.

The CARE Board congratulates the inaugural grantees in this category, to support implementation, translational, and outcomes research that advance the application of scientific discoveries and technologies or informs how the application of scientific discoveries impact patients and populations. A total of 11 grantees are awarded up to $10,439,245 as follows:

• ConnectMyVariant (Principal Investigator: Brian Shirts, MD, PhD)
  Using large pedigrees to determine variant specific risk, a key to understanding the relationship between breast cancer risk and gene function
  Maximum Award Amount: $665,600.00
• Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center (Principal Investigator: Michael Haffner, MD, PhD)
  Defining targetable vulnerabilities in DNA hypomethylated cancers
  Maximum Award Amount: $967,688.00
• Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center (Principal Investigator: Andrew Hsieh, MD)
  Understanding the role of somatic mosaicism in bladder cancer initiation and the therapeutic response
  Maximum Award Amount: $1,500,000.00
• Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center (Principal Investigator: Martin Prlic, PhD)
  Identification of mechanisms and biomarker predictors of recurrence in head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCC)
  Maximum Award Amount: $1,399,999.00
• Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center (Principal Investigator: Joshua Veatch, MD, PhD)
  T cell intrinsic IL-12 signaling for adoptive T cell therapy of cancer
  Maximum Award Amount: $250,000.00
• Orlance, Inc. (Principal Investigator: Ken Bagley, PhD)
  Gene Gun Platform for Delivering Neoantigen Cancer Vaccine
  Maximum Award Amount: $1,454,201.00
• Seattle Children’s Research Institute (Principal Investigator: Vandana Kalia, PhD)
  Balancing safety and efficacy of immunotherapies in neuroblastoma through molecular surrogacy of selective Treg functions
  Maximum Award Amount: $600,000.00
• Seattle Children’s Research Institute (Principal Investigator: Rachel Rau, MD)
  Advancing precision genomics for pediatric leukemia patients with long read sequencing
  Maximum Award Amount: $577,125.00
• Seattle Children’s Research Institute (Principal Investigator: Stephen Smith, PhD)
  Harnessing phosphatase activity to minimize toxicity and increase the anti-cancer activity of CAR T cell therapies
  Maximum Award Amount: $840,560.00
• University of Washington (Principal Investigator: Thelma Escobar, PhD)
  Examining aberrant histone chaperone proteolytic regulation in cancer: new mechanisms and therapeutic potential
  Maximum Award Amount: $690,872.00
• VisionGate, Inc. (Principal Investigator: Alan Nelson, PhD)
  Optimization of the non-invasive LuCED test for detecting early-stage lung cancer
  Maximum Award Amount: $1,493,200.00