Eight Penn Scientists Receive NIH Grants through High-Risk, High-Reward Research Program

PHILADELPHIA—Eight researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania have received research grants designed to invest in high-risk, high-reward projects.

A group of five Penn scientists received the NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award for a project focusing on cancer research, while three investigators received the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award for independent projects developed by early-career investigators.

Established in 2009, the Transformative Research Award promotes cross-cutting, interdisciplinary science and is open to individuals and teams of investigators who propose research that could potentially create or challenge existing paradigms.

Transformative Research Award recipients include:

• Donita Brady, PhD, the Harrison McCrea Dickson, M.D. and Clifford C. Baker, M.D. Presidential Associate Professor in Cancer Biology
• George Burslem, PhD, an assistant professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics and Cancer Biology
• Luca Busino, PhD, an assistant professor of Cancer Biology
• Eric Witze, PhD, an associate professor of Cancer Biology
• Terence Gade, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of Radiology and Cancer Biology

With the award, the Penn Therapeutics Mechanisms research team plans to establish a new development and discovery platform, known as the Probe Enabled Activity Reporting (PEAR) system, designed to explore the proteome—a set of proteins that are expressed by cells, tissues, and organisms—of tumor cells. The resulting discoveries could advance precision cancer medicine by enabling therapeutic development and validating novel concepts and methodologies. As a result, PEAR holds the potential to provide fundamental insights into tumor biology and transform precision oncology by providing a platform to improve existing paradigms for drug discovery.

Since 2007, the New Innovator Award has supported unusually innovative research from early-career investigators who are within 10 years of their final degree or clinical residency and have not yet received a research project grant or equivalent NIH grant.

Award recipients include:

• Chengcheng Jin, PhD, an assistant professor of Cancer Biology: Developing a better understanding of neutrophils, a type of white blood cell, in the tumor microenvironment. The project could reveal novel targets for precision cancer immunotherapies while preserving immune surveillance in healthy tissue.
• Bushra Raj, PhD, an assistant professor of Cell and Developmental Biology: Testing a novel technology that uses CRISPR/Cas gene-editing tools to genomically record inputs from two signaling pathways in the developing zebrafish brain.
• Amelia Escolano, PhD, Wistar Institute assistant professor of Microbiology: Pursuing novel strategies and technologies to advance the design of universal vaccines against highly mutating viruses, bacteria and cancer.

The awards were made through the NIH Common Fund, which supports bold projects that catalyze discovery in biomedical and behavioral research. Participants work across NIH institutes and centers to collaborate on innovative research that is expected to address high-priority challenges for the NIH and the broader scientific community.

This year 103 awards nationally total approximately $285 million in support from the institutes, centers, and offices across NIH over five years beginning in 2022.