NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation this week announced 17 junior physician scientists receiving 2017 Clinical Scientist Development awards, including several researchers conducting omics-related projects.
Selected from a pool of 196 applicants by a panel of experts in medical research, the winning scientists will each receive $495,000 in funding over three years.
Since 1998, the foundation has awarded 288 Clinical Scientist Development Awards totaling more than $128 million to physician scientists between one and five years into their first faculty appointments and transitioning to an independent research career. The award helps recipients to dedicate 75 percent of their professional time to clinical research at a time when they are facing competing priorities as both researcher and clinical care provider, the foundation noted in a statement.
The 17 new award winners include Ajai Dandekar of the University of Washington to study genomic and quorum sensing adaptation of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in cystic fibrosis; Katherine Gallagher of the University of Michigan to investigate how epigenetic regulation of diabetic wounds promotes chronic inflammation and prevents healing; and Aaron Hata of Massachusetts General Hospital to comprehensively assess the evolution of acquired drug resistance in EGFR mutant non-small cell lung cancer.
Other grant recipients conducting omics-related work include Marcin Imielinski of Weill Cornell Medicine to study epigenetic landscapes of rearranged driver-negative cancers; Matthew Kayser of the University of Pennsylvania, who will work to identify biomarkers of treatment response in insomnia and depression with a metabolomics platform; and Nicholas Walter of the University of Colorado to investigate precursor ribosomal RNA as a novel marker of treatment efficacy in tuberculosis.