Indo-American scientist awarded $ 6.5 million for cancer biomarkers

WASHINGTON: An Indo-American scientist has received $ 6.5 million to identify cancer biomarkers that can improve diagnosis and develop new targeted therapies for the deadly disease.

The grant awarded by the US National Cancer Institute to Arul Chinnaiyan, a professor at the University of Michigan, will provide long-term support to improve the understanding of these markers in order to benefit from targeted cancer treatments.

Chinnaiyan has received the National Cancer Institute's Outstanding Investigator Award, which provides funding of USD 6.5 million over seven years, the University of Michigan said in a statement.

"The field of precision oncology continues to evolve with the overriding goal of providing cancer patients with improved diagnostic and prognostic capabilities and better treatments," said Chinnaiyan, a professor. pathology at the University of Michigan's Faculty of Medicine.

"This grant will help us identify new biomarkers and understand their biological roles in cancer progression," Chinnaiyan said in a statement.

The award – about three times the price of a traditional individual researcher – is part of a grant program called R35 developed by the National Cancer Institute.

It is designed to fund projects with unusual potential in cancer research over an extended period of seven years.

The goal is to provide established researchers with long-term support to focus on outstanding and challenging cancer research programs.

The award is designed to support the best researchers who have a proven track record of innovation and success.

In 2010, Chinnaiyan launched the Michigan Oncology Sequencing Program at the Rogel Cancer Center.

Mi-ONCOSEQ is a research protocol for DNA and RNA sequencing of metastatic cancers and normal tissues to identify alterations that may promote treatment.

Chinnaiyan's laboratory also analyzed the global landscape of a part of the genome that had not yet been well explored – long non-coding RNAs.

This large part of the human genome has been considered dark matter because so little is known about it.

New emerging evidence suggests that lncRNAs may play a role in cancer and that their better understanding could lead to new potential targets for improving the diagnosis, prognosis or treatment of cancer.