Texas A&M announces receiving $7.1 million dollars in new grants from CPRIT, the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas.
Since 2015, A&M has received more than $29 million from the state agency that has $6 billion dollars in voter approved funding.
News release from Texas A&M:
The Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) has awarded five grants totaling $7.1 million to Texas A&M University, the Division of Research announced today. The grants are among 62 new statewide awards totaling more than $114 million that CPRIT recently announced in Austin.
“Texas A&M is proud to recognize the outstanding faculty-researchers who have, along with their talented research teams, secured these vital and prestigious grants from CPRIT,” said Vice President for Research Mark A. Barteau. “With CPRIT’s support, we will continue to advance cancer treatment and prevention across our state and around the globe.”
Peter Davies, professor, Translational Medical Sciences, College of Medicine, and director, Center for Translational Cancer Research, Institute of Biosciences and Technology, Texas A&M University Health Science Center (Texas A&M Health), received the largest of the five grants, a $3.9 million Core Facility Support Award for his project “The Combinatorial Drug Discovery Program (CDDP).”
Anna Lichorad, clinical assistant professor, Family Medical Residency and Department of Primary Care Medicine & Population Health, College of Medicine, and a researcher with Texas A&M Health, received a $1.6 million Prevention Grant for her project “Expansion of Texas A&M’s Cancer Prevention Program to Rural and Medically Underserved Women.”
Lei-Shih Chen, associate professor, Department of Health & Kinesiology, College of Education & Human Development, was awarded a $1 million Prevention Grant for her program, “Promoting Access to Maternal Smoking Cessation and Smoke-Free Home Services Among Low Income Rural Pregnant Women and their Household Smokers.”
In addition, CPRIT presented High Impact High Risk Awards of $250,000 each to:
• Robert S. Chapkin, University Distinguished Professor, Department of Nutrition & Food Science, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and a researcher with Texas A&M AgriLife, “Targeting Plasma Membrane Spatial Dynamics to Suppress Obesity-Induced Colon Cancer.”
• Robert Yu-Lin Tsai, associate professor, Center for Translational Cancer Research, Institute of Biosciences and Technology, Texas A&M Health, “Genome-Wide DNA Methylation Markers for Predicting the Risk of Liver Cancer in Non-Alcoholic Fatty Livers.”
To date, CPRIT has awarded $2.6 billion in grants to Texas research institutions and organizations through its academic research, prevention and product development research programs. CPRIT has recruited 213 distinguished researchers; supported the establishment, expansion or relocation of 42 companies to Texas; and generated more than $5 billion in additional public and private investments. CPRIT funding has advanced scientific and clinical knowledge and provided 6.6 million life-saving cancer prevention and early detection services reaching Texans from all 254 counties. On Nov. 5, 2019, Texas voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment to provide an additional $3 billion to CPRIT for a total $6 billion investment in cancer research and prevention.
About Research at Texas A&M University: As one of the world’s leading research institutions, Texas A&M is at the forefront in making significant contributions to scholarship and discovery, including in science and technology. Research conducted at Texas A&M generated annual expenditures of more than $952 million in fiscal year 2019. Texas A&M ranked in the top 20 of the most recent National Science Foundation Higher Education Research and Development survey based on expenditures of more than $922 million in fiscal year 2018. Texas A&M’s research creates new knowledge that provides basic, fundamental and applied contributions resulting, in many cases, in economic benefits to the state, nation and world. To learn more, visit Research@Texas A&M.