Developmental Funds

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT CCSG developmental funds are vital to furthering the strategic mission and vision of the Markey Cancer Center (MCC) and providing added value to MCC members. The MCC utilizes developmental funds, leveraged with institutional and philanthropic funds, to support pilot grants, emerging Shared Resource Facilities (SRFs), and strategic new faculty recruitments. Pilot grant funding from the CCSG supports collaborative and interdisciplinary cancer research focusing on MCC priority areas; funded projects are carried out by interactions between MCC members in our 4 Research Programs (Cancer Cell Biology and Signaling; Cancer Prevention and Control; Drug Discovery, Delivery and Translational Therapeutics; and Genomic Instability, Epigenetics and Metabolism) and supported by our 5 existing SRFs (Biostatistics and Bioinformatics; Biospecimen Procurement and Translational Pathology; Cancer Research Informatics; Flow Cytometry and Cell Sorting; and Redox Metabolism) and 2 developing SRFs (Behavioral and Community-Based Research and Oncogenomics). Pilot funds stimulate high return on investment research that makes a significant impact in the fields of basic, clinical, population, and translational cancer research. In the last funding period, 19 pilot projects were funded (using $475,000 from the CCSG, leveraged with $425,000 from the institution) leading to 11 subsequent external grants totaling $6,583,106 in total project costs, a return of $13.86 per CCSG dollar invested. In particular, developmental funds have allowed both basic and clinician scientists to advance their research projects, including those involving clinical and health disparity issues pertinent to the MCC catchment area, and successfully compete for extramural funding. CCSG developmental funds have also supported the advancement of MCC basic science research from the bench to the bedside by providing funding for projects that are currently accruing patients in clinical trials. These developmental funds have enhanced MCC's growth and productivity by facilitating key faculty recruitments during the current funding period: namely, in support of the addition of new faculty for molecular epidemiology and for precision medicine whose research and talents closely align with the MCC mission. In the upcoming funding period, CCSG Developmental Funds will be used to address 2 Specific Aims: 1) foster innovative and collaborative science through the funding of pilot grants in areas prioritized by the MCC Strategic Plan and reflecting the scientific aims of MCC's 4 Research Programs; and 2) support of 2 developing SRFs in alignment with our objective of providing enhanced services to MCC Research Programs. To achieve these aims, the MCC requests $200,000 per year in Developmental Funds. Completion of these aims through the use of Developmental Funds will allow MCC to achieve several key objectives as outlined in the MCC Strategic Plan, including advancement of precision medicine initiatives, enhancing transdisciplinary collaborations in areas of metabolic reprogramming and tumor resistance, and development of novel investigator-initiated clinical trials.