U.S. Senators Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand today announced $1,906,636 in federal funding for cancer research at Cornell University. The funding was allocated through the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) National Cancer Institute (NCI). The funding will be used to establish the Center on the Physics of Cancer Metabolism at Cornell, a new research center focused on working across professional and disciplinary boundaries to study how tumors develop in the body. By fostering collaboration among physical scientists, cancer biologists, and clinicians, the Center will seek to answer crucial questions about how cancer progresses. The award will fund the first year of a five-year project, linking investigators at Cornell University, the University of Texas-MD Anderson Cancer Center and the University of California, San Francisco.
“This funding will bring together the country’s leading medical and scientific minds through Cornell University to fight a devastating disease that has affected so many of our loved ones,” said Senator Schumer. “This unprecedented, yet desperately needed, interdisciplinary collaboration will seek to answer important questions about the growth and progression of cancer and bring us one step closer to finally defeating it.”
“Cornell University is home to world-class medical research and it is critical that we continue to invest in cutting-edge, life-saving cancer research,” said Senator Gillibrand. “While cancer continues to claim lives, with the right investments in prevention, diagnosis, and treatment, our scientists will have the tools and resources needed to help families combat this terrible disease. I am pleased Cornell University will get critical funding to create the new Center on the Physics of Cancer Metabolism to help collaborate and advance research in the field of cancer treatment and remediation.”
“This award will enable us to generate completely new insights into how cancers develop and spread to other parts of the body in a process termed metastasis,” said project leader Dr. Claudia Fischbach-Teschl, an Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering. “It’s an exciting project because it promises to result in improved diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients and because it will accomplish this goal by bringing together an interdisciplinary group of researchers and patient advocates across New York State as well as other parts of the country.”
The National Cancer Institute leads the National Cancer Program and the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) efforts to dramatically reduce the prevalence of cancer and improve the lives of cancer patients and their families, through research into prevention and cancer biology, the development of new interventions, and the training and mentoring of new researchers. NIH, the nation’s medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.