Newswise — The Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI) has awarded AACI Translational Cancer Research Fellowships to Olya Grove, PhD, and Piro Lito, MD, PhD. The scientists are from Moffitt Cancer Center, in Tampa, Florida, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, in New York City, respectively.
Funded by Amgen and Astellas, the one-year, $50,000 grants help ensure that qualified applicants from AACI member institutions receive training and experience under the guidance of established investigators who have demonstrated success in their fields of research.
“The goal of the fellowship is to assist the trainee in becoming a high-caliber, productive independent researcher with an enduring focus on translational research relevant to cancer,” said AACI Executive Director Barbara Duffy Stewart, MPH.
Ms. Stewart extended her thanks to the fellowship’s program advisor, Beverly Mitchell, MD, director of the Stanford Cancer Institute, for her leadership and service to AACI.
This year’s winning researchers and their projects are: • Olya Grove, PhD Postdoctoral Research Fellow Moffitt Cancer Center Project Title: Imaging Hypoxia in Lung Cancer Mentor: Robert J. Gillies, PhD
• Piro Lito, MD, PhD Fellow in Medical Oncology Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Project Title: Does Spry expression confer sensitivity to RAF inhibitors in BRAF V600E tumors? Mentor: Neal Rosen, MD, PhD
Dr. Grove began her postdoctoral fellowship at Moffitt Cancer Center in January 2012. She joined Moffitt’s Department of Cancer Imaging and Metabolism to work on the center’s Radiomics of Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer (NSCLC) study.
Dr. Lito joined Memorial Sloan-Kettering in 2010 and has worked in Dr. Rosen’s laboratory over the past year and a half to characterize the role of ERK-dependent feedback in the response of BRAF V600E mutated tumors to RAF inhibitors.
The fellowship period runs from July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2014. Drs. Grove and Lito will present their research findings at the 2014 AACI/CCAF Annual Meeting in Chicago. For additional information regarding the fellowship program, please contact Kate Burroughs at [email protected].
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Representing 95 of the nation’s premier academic and free-standing cancer research centers, the Association of American Cancer Institutes is dedicated to promoting leading research institutions' efforts to eradicate cancer through a comprehensive and multidisciplinary program of cancer research, treatment, patient care, prevention, education and community outreach.
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