The CARE Fund Board of Directors is proud to continue a record-breaking year of investments in cancer research, announcing over $2 million in a new funding category, Breakthrough Seed Funding.

The purpose of the Breakthrough Seed Funding grant is to encourage and support life science companies, entrepreneurs, innovators, and researchers who seek to explore and develop innovative ideas and strategies to substantially advance cancer research and care from etiology to survivorship. These projects have the potential for high impact breakthroughs in cancer research and care that will extend understanding or uncover new pathways beyond the span of the project.

The CARE Fund congratulates the inaugural grantees in this category, to support early-stage research projects that are pursuing promising areas of cancer research.

• Institute for Systems Biology (Principal Investigator: Wei Wei, PhD)
  Unraveling Tumor-Immune Microenvironment by a Novel Spatial Assay Registering Cellular Metabolic Functions with Underlying Omic Profiles at Single-Cell Resolution
• Phase Genomics, Inc. (Principal Investigator: Stephen Eacker, PhD)
  An AI-based Platform Cytogenomic Risk Assessment in Colorectal Carcinoma
• Seattle Children’s Research Institute (Principal Investigator: Shannon Oda, PhD)
  Developing Adoptive Cell Therapy Engineering Strategies to Catalyze and Diversify Endogenous Antitumor Immune Responses
• University of Washington (Principal Investigators: Christopher Blosser, MD; Shreeram Akilesh, MD, PhD)
  Role of Complement C3 in Kidney Cancer
• University of Washington (Principal Investigator: Jennifer Nemhauser, PhD)
  A Synthetic Genetic Platform to Deliver Higher Precision Care for Recurrent or Refractory Cancers with Wnt Pathway Activation
• University of Washington (Principal Investigator: Wesley Van Voorhis, MD, PhD): Selective Glycolysis Inhibitors (SGIs): Enabling Clinical Development of Novel Small Molecules for the Treatment of Advanced Prostate Cancer