School of Medicine research team is awarded $3.4 million Cancer Moonshot initiative grant

UCI School of Medicine researchers have been awarded a $3.4 million grant by the National Cancer Institute as part of the Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot initiative. The funding will support efforts to provide proof of principal data for an entirely new class of cancer-killing immunotherapeutics with the potential to treat highly diverse types of cancer, from leukemia to breast cancer. The principal investigator is Dr. Michael Demetriou, professor of microbiology & molecular genetics, as well as neurology, and a member of the NCI-designated Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at UCI. The researchers will become part of the NCI’s Immuno-Oncology Translational Network – created to foster collaboration in discovering new immune targets and evaluating novel immune-based therapies and combination approaches that prevent or eliminate cancer in adults – and meet regularly with other grant awardees. The Cancer Moonshot initiative was established to accelerate research and aims to make more therapies available to more patients, while also improving our abilities to prevent cancer and detect it at an early stage.