The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation named 18 new Damon Runyon Fellows and 5 new Damon Runyon Clinical Investigators in May 2007.  The recipients of each of these prestigious, three-year awards are outstanding young postdoctoral and physician-scientists conducting basic and translational cancer research in laboratories across the country.  Together with our partners, Eli Lilly and Company, Siemens Medical Solutions, Novartis, Genentech, the Robert Black Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Merck,  Abbott, Berlex and individual donors the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation has committed millions to support the careers of the next generation of basic and clinical cancer researchers.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL!


2007 Clinical Investigators

Colleen Delaney, MD, MSc, “Notch-mediated ex vivo expansion of cord blood progenitors for hematopoietic cell transplantation” with Irwin D. Bernstein, MD, and Frederick R. Appelbaum, MD, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington

Douglas K. Graham, MD, PhD, “Novel biologically targeted therapy against the Mer receptor tyrosine kinase in the treatment of pediatric ALL” with James V. DeGregori, PhD, and Sue Gail Eckhardt, MD, University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center, Aurora, Colorado

Juan Carlos Ramos, MD, “Resistance to interferon-based therapy in adult T-cell leukemia” with William J. Harrington, MD, and Glen N. Barber, PhD, University of Miami School of Medicine, Miami, Florida

Joel H. Rubenstein, MD, “The epidemiology of adipokines in Barrett's esophagus” with John M. Inadomi, MD, and Philip S. Schoenfeld, MD, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan

Catherine J. Wu, MD, “Immune-targeted leukemia antigens for eradication of CML stem cells” with Jerome Ritz, MD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, Massachusetts


May 2007 Damon Runyon Fellows

Danielle S.W. Benoit, PhD, “Intracellularly targeted siRNA delivery vehicles for cancer therapies” with Patrick S. Stayton, PhD, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington

Maya Capelson, PhD, “Investigation into the role of the nuclear pore complex in chromatin function” with Martin W. Hetzer, PhD, The Salk Institute for Biological Studies, La Jolla, California

Lea A. Goentoro, PhD, “Toward a systems-level understanding of the canonical Wnt signaling pathway” with Marc W. Kirschner, PhD, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts

Michael D. Gordon, PhD, “Taste and smell integration in Drosophila melanogaster” with Kristin Scott, PhD, University of California, Berkeley, California

Ryan C. Heller, PhD, “Analysis of initial stages of the activation of replication origins in Saccharomyces cerevisiae” with Stephen P. Bell, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Thomas M. Huckaba, PhD, “Identification and characterization of tubulin acetylase” with Ronald D. Vale, PhD, University of California, San Francisco, California

Melissa R. Junttila, PhD, “Re-designing p53-mediated tumor suppression” with Gerard I. Evan, PhD, University of California, San Francisco, California "

László Kürti, PhD, “Synthesis of anti-angiogenic steroidal alkaloid, Cortistatin A and preparation of potentially active analogs” with Elias James Corey, PhD, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

David S. Matus, PhD, “Unraveling the gene regulatory network underlying anchor cell invasion” with David R. Sherwood, PhD, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina

Yunsun Nam, PhD, “Structural and biochemical studies of protein translocation mediated by SecA and SecYEG” with Tom A. Rapoport, PhD, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts

Cara T. Pager, PhD, “The role of liver-specific microRNA-122 in Hepatitis C virus gene expression” with Peter Sarnow, PhD, Stanford University, Stanford, California

Katharina Schlacher, PhD, “Taking on SSA, a mutagenic DNA repair pathway induced in familial inherited breast cancer” with Maria Jasin, PhD, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York "

Heather M. Scobie, PhD, “Defining the functional interface between Campylobacter jejuni and its mammalian host cells” with Jorge E. Galán, PhD, DVM, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut

Sarah E. Siegrist, PhD, “Mechanisms of adult neurogenesis in Drosophila melanogaster” with Iswar K. Hariharan, MBBS, PhD, University of California, Berkeley, California "

Karsten H. Siller, PhD, “Mechanisms of homeostatic synaptic scaling” with Lu Chen, PhD, University of California, Berkeley, California

Tao Wang, PhD, “Dissection of the TSC/Rheb/TOR pathway in cell growth control” with Bruce A. Edgar, PhD, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, Washington

Kathryn E. Wellen, PhD, “Role of hexosamine signaling in linking metabolism and growth control” with Craig B. Thompson, MD, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Yu Wong, MD, PhD, “Development of novel T cell repertoire assay for the study of the immune response to breast cancer” with Mark M. Davis, PhD, Stanford University, Stanford, California