Cancer Frontier Fund Supports Six New Research Projects at Siteman Cancer Center

In its milestone 15th year, we are pleased to announce that the Cancer Frontier Fund at The Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital recently funded six new projects through the Siteman Investment Program (SIP), a research grant program at Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine. In total, SIP awarded $1.4 million from a variety of sources, including more than $951,000 from the Cancer Frontier Fund and other cancer research funds at the Foundation. The Cancer Frontier Fund includes gifts from generous donors made throughout the year, and through the Foundation’s annual Illumination Gala and Pedal the Cause’s annual bike challenge.

SIP is a biannual, highly competitive, peer-reviewed grant program designed to accelerate innovation in cancer research. These grants provide researchers with the opportunities to gather critical evidence necessary to compete for larger federal funding. Often, this early-stage funding determines the ability, success, and rate at which scientific discoveries can progress from an early idea to patient care and treatment.

Over 15 years, the Cancer Frontier Fund, through SIP, has supported more than 180 promising cancer research projects. And, for every dollar of philanthropic support to the Fund, SIP recipients leverage an additional $13 from national funding to expand and accelerate research.

Sheila Stewart, PhD, a Washington University cellular biologist and physiologist at Siteman and a 2022 SIP award recipient, feels grateful for the philanthropic support from the Cancer Frontier Fund that launched her vital early-stage research. As she told an audience at this spring’s Cancer Frontier Night, “Cancer Frontier Fund donors funded something the National Institutes of Health refused to fund because it might not have worked.” With this grant, Dr. Stewart and her team discovered how nontumor cells that support tumor cell growth can be blocked to stop this growth at the same rate as a type of chemotherapy. The team hopes these promising results will lead to a clinical trial in late 2024 to investigate the impact of this novel treatment plan on patients with metastatic breast cancer.

2024 Cycle 1 SIP Awards:

• A Pilot Study to Assess the Safety and Immunogenicity of a Neoantigen-based Personalized DNA Vaccine with Retifanlimab PD-1 Blockade Therapy in Patients with Newly Diagnosed Unmethylated Glioblastoma (Brain)
  Principal Investigator: Tanner Johanns, MD, PhD
   
• SWIFT RT: Ultra-hypofractionated Radiation for Node Positive Breast Cancer (Breast)
  Principal Investigator: Maria Thomas, MD, PhD
   
• TMEJ and BRCA1 Mutant Tumor Development (Breast, Ovarian)
  Principal Investigator: John Krais, PhD
   
• Targeting SERPINB3 to Improve Both Tumor and Immune Response in Cervical Cancer (Cervical)
  Principal Investigator: Stephanie Markovina, MD, PhD
   
• Enhancing Home Hospice: Piloting a Digital Symptom Management Tool for Advanced Cancer Care (Palliative Care)
  Principal Investigator: Karla Washington, PhD
   
• Epitope-edited Allogeneic CD2 CAR-T (UCART2edit) for T Cell Malignancies (Leukemia, Lymphoma)
  Principal Investigator: Jingyu Xiang, MD, MSCI
  CO-Principal Investigator: John DiPersio, MD, PhD

Availability of funding often determines the rate at which scientific discoveries can progress from an early idea to patient care and treatment, making your support critical to ensure the fund is replenished and that each generation has access to the most innovative therapies.

Make a gift to the Cancer Frontier Fund today. 

Additional SIP Funding
In addition to gifts to the Cancer Frontier Fund at The Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital, further support for SIP comes from the Cancer Center Support Grant from the National Cancer Institute, the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Research Fund; the Director’s Discovery Fund, and various philanthropic gifts via Siteman Cancer Center.