Two UAMS Cancer Researchers Win More Than $5 Million in NIH Awards: Work Targets T-Cell Therapy and DNA Repair
The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in Little Rock, Pulaski County, Arkansas, announced on October 20 that two researchers at its Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute have received five-year awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) totaling more than $5 million.
Assistant professor Brian Koss received an R01 award of more than $2.9 million from the National Cancer Institute to study how to make adoptive T-cell therapy more effective against solid tumors. T-cell therapy works well against blood cancers, but in solid tumors the T cells become "exhausted" and lose their ability to kill cancer cells; his team's earlier work identified an enzyme, RNF166, that may prevent that exhaustion and help CAR T-cells attack solid tumors for longer. Koss, Arkansas' first recipient of the NIH Director's Early Independence Award, joined UAMS in 2021.
Assistant professor Joonas Jämsén received more than $2.1 million from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to study how cells repair the most serious form of DNA damage, double-strand breaks, and why failures in that process can lead to cancer. In 2023 he took part in discovering a previously unknown DNA break repair pathway.
Cancer Institute director Michael Birrer said the two highly competitive awards could deepen understanding of cancer and improve treatment. Both researchers are assistant professors in the UAMS College of Medicine Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
(Source: UAMS)
Source: UAMS
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 阿肯色医科大学（UAMS）Little Rock 主校区航拍。摄影：Uams communications，Attribution 授权（Wikimedia Commons）
