NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) — Six US institutions that pursue a wide range of genomic, molecular, and personalized cancer research have received a total of $540 million in new funding from Ludwig Cancer Research.
The centers receiving funding are located at Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, Stanford University, and the University of Chicago.
The six Ludwig Centers at these institutions, which all have previously been funded by Ludwig Cancer Research, each will receive $90 million donations to continue their ongoing research programs, which have already advanced research into genomic mapping of cancer, immunotherapy treatments, and new treatments for metastatic and rare cancers, the foundation said today.
Scientists at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center used its earlier Ludwig funding to establish the center, to create the first genomic maps of cancer, to study the genetic codes of a dozen forms of cancer, and to discover cancer-linked genes, JHU said.
Harvard Medical School will use its funding to "build upon and extend research activities," attract new biomedical and cancer researchers, and pursue previous findings through further research.
The funding to the University of Chicago will be used to support research focused on cancer metastasis, to expand its cancer center, buy new equipment, and recruit new scientists.
The Ludwig Center for Molecular Oncology at MIT will use its $90 million to support research efforts that also focus on understanding how cancer spreads through the body and how to stop it, MIT said.
"These funds come at an especially critical time when federal funding for cancer and other forms of biomedical research are in jeopardy," Ludwig MIT Center Scholar Tyler Jacks said in a statement.
At Memorial Sloan-Kettering, the new funding will support translational research into immunologic therapies, among other research programs, and at Stanford the donation will fund cancer stem cell research.