Claudia Benavente is awarded a $2.1 million NCI grant to combat childhood bone cancer

Claudia Benavente, an assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences and developmental & cell biology at UCI, has received a $2.1 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to develop a novel therapeutic treatment for osteosarcoma. Her research aims to explain the role of the chromatin remodeling protein UHRF1 as a potential target in the treatment of childhood bone cancer. “Our data shows that targeting UHRF1 overexpression dramatically increases survival in mice bearing osteosarcoma tumors and reduces the rate and number of metastases, which are the main cause of death in patients with this disease,” Benavente said. “This project aims to further understand this process in order to help design new treatments.” Osteosarcoma is the eighth-most-common form of childhood cancer and has a survival rate of just over 50 percent.