Career Enhancement Program

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Career Enhancement Program SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The central goal of the Career Enhancement Program (CEP) is to use the resources at MD Anderson to train exceptional young investigators who will reduce the morbidity and mortality from ovarian cancer through making advances in the early detection, prevention, and treatment of this disease. To achieve this goal, the SPORE CEP will provide two awards, each of $50,000 annually for two years, funded from the SPORE and matching funds from MD Anderson. The intent of each CEP award is to prepare the selected scientists to become international leaders in academic research relevant to ovarian cancer. We will achieve this by aggressive recruitment of the most promising young investigators and the institution of an individualized development plan with clinical and a laboratory mentors and a mentoring committee, formal course work, coaching in grant and paper writing, leadership training, attendance at national meetings, networking with ovarian cancer scholars and completing and publishing a translational ovarian cancer research program. During our past SPORE awards, the CEP has developed the careers of 21 young investigators. In the first year of the original grant, three postdoctoral trainees received CE awards, and of the 18 faculty members supported since 2000, all have remained in academic research and 13 are engaged predominantly in ovarian cancer research. Ten have achieved peer-reviewed funding and two additional awardees have received competitive foundation grants. The six awardees in the most recently funded cycle received one R01, one R03, two CPRIT awards, two Texas Center for Nanotechnology Grants, one Liz Tilberis Scholar Award from the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund and one Susan Poorman Blackie Ovarian Cancer grant. After entering the program, awardees have published over 500 peer-reviewed papers regarding ovarian cancer. Of the faculty awardees, five are project leaders, co-investigators, collaborators or core leaders on the current SPORE (Drs. Anil Sood, Jinsong Liu, KK Wong, Vikas Kundra, and Guang Peng). Moving forward, the CEP will be led by Dr. Anil Sood, who is an outstanding role model and most effective mentor.