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Stanford Cancer Institute members Allison Kurian, MD, MSc, and Jennifer Caswell-Jin, MD, received a $3.5 million legacy gift to launch the Bright Pink Preventive Risk Outreach And Cascade Testing Program. The program aims to lower the burden of cancer for individuals and their families by providing easy access to education and genetic testing.

LSU Health New Orleans has been awarded a five-year, $3.1 million grant from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research. The grant will be used to conduct new research in conjunction with the LSU LCMC Health Cancer Center. The project, titled the ROPINA trial, will study the increased risk of human papillomavirus related head and neck squamous cell carcinoma in people living with HIV.

Six Fred Hutch/University of Washington/Seattle Children’s Cancer Consortium scientists received $1.7 million in grants from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation to launch or continue studies aimed at improving outcomes in breast cancer.

The Robert J. Kleberg, Jr. and Helen C. Kleberg Foundation has awarded a $1 million grant to support research at Vanderbilt aimed at dramatically expanding the efficacy of immunotherapy for colorectal cancer. The work is the latest collaboration between Robert Coffey, MD (pictured, right), and Ken Lau, PhD, to understand the mechanisms of colorectal cancer.

In the lab of Minna Roh-Johnson, PhD, great science and great mentorship are inseparable. Now, a new National Cancer Institute (NCI) award has made that philosophy concrete. The award is is an administrative supplement to recognize excellence in diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility mentorship.

Nina Bhardwaj, MD, PhD, Ward-Coleman Chair in Cancer Research and director of the Vaccine and Cell Therapy Laboratory at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine for her pioneering work in cancer immunotherapy.

Thomas Varghese Jr., MD, MS, MBA, FACS, has been named the new editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, effective March 1, 2025. Dr. Varghese currently serves as associate chief medical quality officer at Huntsman Cancer Hospital, chief value officer at Huntsman Cancer Institute, and chief of general thoracic surgery at the University of Utah.

Richard J. Bleicher, MD, FACS, chief of the Division of Breast Surgery and clinical director of the Breast Service Line at Fox Chase Cancer Center, has been appointed vice chair of the National Accreditation Program for Breast Centers (NAPBC) and chair of its executive committee.

Nita Maihle, PhD, has won a Mayo Clinic Distinguished Alumni Award. Dr. Maihle is a professor of medicine at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMMC). She is a pioneer in the field of translational cancer research, working to improve cancer detection, prevention, and treatment, particularly in cancers that affect women.

A team of lung cancer specialists from Fox Chase Cancer Center and Temple Health was recently recognized by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC) as the winner of the North American Cancer Care Team Award during this year’s annual meeting in San Diego.

The University of New Mexico Comprehensive Cancer Center has successfully received reaccreditation from the Commission on Cancer (CoC), a quality program of the American College of Surgeons. The CoC is a consortium of professional organizations dedicated to improving survival and quality of life for patients with cancer by setting and raising standards.

Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center’s Intensive Care Unit has earned the Beacon Award for Excellence from the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses. The bronze award marks the cancer center’s second national award for nursing excellence so far this year, joining Magnet® Recognition from the American Nurses Credentialing Center.

The Thyroid and Thyroid Cancer Research team, or ThyCARE, at the Rogel Cancer Center received the inaugural Endocrine Care Innovation Award from the American Association of Endocrinology.

AACI mourns the loss of Ken Cowan, MD, PhD, who passed away on Sunday, December 15. A former member of AACI’s Board of Directors, Dr. Cowan led the NCI-Designated Cancer Center at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) for more than 20 years. Joining UNMC in 1999 as director of what was then called the Eppley Cancer Center and the Eppley Institute for Cancer Research, Dr. Cowan stepped down in 2023 but remained a full-time faculty member and clinician. The center changed its name in 2…

Stand Up for Science is supporting rallies in Washington, DC, and 31 other U.S. cities on Friday, March 7. The grassroots group aims to defend science as a public good and a pillar of social, political, and economic progress, calling on policymakers, institutions, and the scientific community to uphold the integrity of science and ensure it benefits all people. At least 40 AACI member cancer centers are located within an hour of a rally site and we encourage you to participate in a rally near y…

Registration is open for the 17th Annual AACI Clinical Research Innovation (CRI) Meeting, June 23-25 at the Loews Chicago O'Hare Hotel in Rosemont, IL. A discounted early registration rate will be available through Monday, March 17. The programming for this year's CRI meeting, "Driving Solutions Together," will center on fostering inclusive practices and expanding community impact.

The GVHD Alliance has honored Shernan Holtan, MD, chief of blood and marrow transplantation at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, as the recipient of the 2025 Lukas D. Wartman Award. This recognition acknowledges Dr. Holtan’s groundbreaking contributions to improving outcomes for patients battling graft-versus-host disease.

Emma Guilbaud, PhD, a postdoctoral associate at Fox Chase Cancer Center, has been selected as a Forbeck Scholar by the William Guy Forbeck Research Foundation. This appointment recognizes early career cancer researchers for their achievements, research, and dedication to the field.

Ze’ev Ronai, PhD, director of the Translational Research Institute at Cedars-Sinai, has received an Outstanding Investigator Award from the National Cancer Institute. The award comes with approximately $4.2 million over seven years to support research on how melanoma cells evade cancer therapies and the body’s immune system. This is the second time that Dr. Ronai has received the award.

With $1.2 million in initial funding, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences researchers will help the National Institutes of Health build a nationwide infrastructure that ultimately will improve access to clinical studies and help primary care clinicians more quickly implement new medical evidence into the everyday care they provide.

Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah has received a federal contract award that will broaden access to specialized cancer care for Utah’s rural and frontier patients. The five-year research project was awarded by the ARPA-H PARADIGM program. HCI will accomplish the program objectives by building upon its existing Huntsman at Home™ program.

Jenny Chang, MD, MBBChir, MHCM, has been chosen to lead the Houston Methodist Academic Institute. Dr. Chang has led the Dr. Mary and Ron Neal Cancer Center since 2010. Nestor F. Esnaola, MD, MPH, MBA, FACS, will serve as interim director of the cancer center while a national search is conducted to replace Dr. Chang.

UPMC Hillman Cancer Center has announced a new interim director, Kathryn Schmitz, PhD, MPH, and interim deputy director, José P. Zevallos, MD, MPH. The former interim director, Jeremy Rich, MD, MHS, MBA, has accepted a new role outside the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC.

A type of aggressive, treatment-resistant brain tumor has a distinct population of immune cells that support its growth, according to new research led by investigators at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Many Medicare patients with advanced cancer receive potentially aggressive treatment at the expense of supportive care, according to an analysis of Medicare records. The study examined the quality of end-of-life care among 33,744 Medicare decedents from diverse ethnic backgrounds, age 66 or older, who died from breast, prostate, pancreatic, or lung cancers.

An international team of doctors led by Joshua Brody, MD, director of the Lymphoma Immunotherapy Program at The Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai, has made a major breakthrough in treating a common and challenging form of cancer called diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.

At the 25th annual Meeting of the Society of Urologic Oncology, Daniel J. George, MD, presented a session on real-world treatment and clinical outcomes for patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer treated with olaparib. Dr. George co-chairs the Center for Prostate and Urologic Cancers at the Duke Cancer Institute.

Stanford researchers have conducted the first large-scale screen of single nucleotide variants, homing in on fewer than 400 that are essential to initiate and drive cancer growth. These variants control several common biological pathways, including those governing whether and how well a cell can repair damage to its DNA, how it produces energy, and how it interacts with and moves through its microenvironment.

Like a football team disrupting the opponent’s play, researchers at UNM Comprehensive Cancer Center are designing a gel to prevent cancers caused by human papillomaviruses (HPVs). With no other antiviral treatments for HPV diseases available, the antiviral gel may help people who are unable to get the HPV vaccine. The gel repurposes an FDA-approved melanoma treatment and is currently in preclinical studies.

Scientists at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center have identified an innovative combination of treatment strategies that work collaboratively to effectively kill acute myeloid leukemia (AML). New research findings suggest that a class of drugs known as MCL-1 (myeloid leukemia cell-1) inhibitors interact with a type of kinase inhibitor that targets the SRC gene to efficiently trigger cell death in AML cells.

A new UK Markey Cancer Center study provides important insights for future clinical trials in treating advanced cervical cancer by establishing a five-month progression-free survival benchmark for evaluating new therapies.

Men undergoing radiation therapy for prostate cancer who experience side effects early in treatment may face a higher risk of developing more serious long-term urinary and bowel health issues, according to a new study led by investigators from the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Researchers at UC San Francisco have found that some cancers, like glioma, make unique, jumbled proteins that make them stand out. These newly recognized cancer-specific proteins, or antigens, could speed the development of immunotherapies that recognize and attack hard-to-treat tumors.

An enzyme called cyclin-dependent kinase 2 (CDK2) regulates the cell cycle and may have the potential to drive therapeutic resistance to common breast cancer drugs – including a class of targeted treatments known as CDK4/6 inhibitors. A new study led by Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center scientists highlights the therapeutic impact of CDK2 inhibitors.

An 18-year survivor of neuroblastoma, a solid childhood tumor that develops in immature nerve cells, is believed to represent the longest reported remission to date in a patient treated with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy.

Emory University chemists invented a reaction to streamline the total synthesis of a compound, phaeocaulisin A, extracted from a plant used in traditional Chinese medicine. In laboratory dish experiments conducted with biologists at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University, researchers showed the compound’s efficacy against HER2-positive breast cancer cells and triple-negative breast cancer cells. An analogue of the compound boosted this efficacy.

In a randomized clinical trial, researchers from Huntsman Cancer Institute have found that short-course, higher dose vaginal brachytherapy for endometrial cancer had similar effectiveness to more frequent, lower dose sessions.

Fox Chase Cancer Center researchers, with colleagues from Moffitt Cancer Center, recently published an updated review of guidelines governing the use of neoadjuvant and adjuvant therapy for patients with melanoma.

In two studies, University of Michigan researchers are the first to demonstrate in the U.S. that self-sampling is just as effective as speculum-based testing for human papillomavirus (HPV) detection.

By characterizing the demographics and comorbidities of patients screened for lung cancer in three states, a new study led by the UF Health Cancer Center lays the groundwork for a personalized approach to screening for the deadliest cancer.

A team of scientists at The University of Kansas Cancer Center’s Cancer Biology research program are exploring ways to improve the CA125 blood test, one of the primary tools for detecting ovarian cancer, as well as developing new methods for identifying ovarian cancer biomarkers.

A team of researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the University of Maryland Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center have analyzed the pre-treatment CT scans of patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma to locate radiomic biomarkers that can be used to predict the aggressiveness of the disease and its response to treatment.

In patients with high-risk HER2-positive breast cancer, postsurgery, or adjuvant, treatment with trastuzumab emtansine reduced the long-term risk of death or invasive disease by 46 percent and improved survival compared to trastuzumab alone, according to the final results of the phase 3 KATHERINE clinical trial led by researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC Hillman Cancer Center.

Through the Global Platform for Access to Childhood Cancer Medicines, the World Health Organization (WHO) and St. Jude have begun distributing critically-needed childhood cancer medicines in two of six pilot countries. Medicines are currently being delivered to Mongolia and Uzbekistan, with shipments planned for Ecuador, Jordan, Nepal, and Zambia.

Season 9 of the Patient Advocate Foundation's (PAF) acclaimed podcast, Advocates in Action, is now streaming. Please listen to the first episode, featuring PAF's Gwen Darien in conversation with Freddie White-Johnson, Robert A. Winn, MD, and Reginald Tucker-Seeley, ScD, as they share the common and unique barriers to care in the regions they serve, along with the solutions they champion.

OU Health Stephenson Cancer Center has launched a mobile lung cancer screening bus, in collaboration with the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust and others, to bring critical early detection capabilities directly to communities across Oklahoma.

At Markey Cancer Center, we’re breaking down barriers to advance innovations in cancer research on a global scale. Read the full story at ukhealthcare.com/cancer.

Dan Theodorescu, MD, PhD, has been appointed director of the University of Arizona Cancer Center. Dr. Theodorescu is a leader in bladder cancer research. He has also served as director of Cedars-Sinai Cancer, in Los Angeles, and the University of Colorado Cancer Center.