Announcing the 2024 Columbia Precision Medicine Joint Pilot Grants Awardees
Four research teams at Columbia University have been awarded a 2024 Precision Medicine Pilot Grant to advance the fields of RNA targeting, phenome-wide association, lung cancer and artificial intelligence.
Jointly awarded by the Columbia Precision Medicine Initiative (CPMI), the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center (HICCC), and the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, the Precision Medicine Pilot Grants underscore Columbia University’s commitment to supporting diverse, cross-disciplinary research targeting the promise of precision medicine. Each team will receive a one-year $100,000 grant to support their research. The four projects are being led by principal investigators: Chaolin Zhang, PhD, Associate Professor of Systems Biology and Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics; Gamze Gursoy, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics; Carla Concepcion-Crisol, PhD, Assistant Professor of Molecular Pharmacology and Therapeutics; Samuel Sia, MD, PhD, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, and Daichi Shimbo, MD, Professor of Medicine. Congratulations to the awarded teams.
Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center (HICCC)
Evaluating targeted therapies for SMARCA4-mutant non-small cell lung cancer
Investigators: Carla Concepcion-Crisol, PhD (Principal Investigator); Benjamin Herzberg, MD
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. Alterations in a gene called SMARCA4 occur in ~10% of non-small cell lung cancers (the most common type of lung cancer), and are strongly associated with shorter time to metastasis, inferior responses to targeted therapies, and very poor patient survival. This proposal aims to elucidate the molecular and cellular mechanisms that underlie the poor responses of SMARCA4-altered lung cancers to promising targeted therapies and test new combinations that may be more efficacious in patients with SMARCA4-altered lung cancer. Our long-term goal is to develop effective therapeutic strategies that will improve patient outcomes for patients with this deadly molecular subtype of lung cancer.