NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – The Medical College of Wisconsin yesterday announced it has received a $1.75 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study genetics factors in the breast cancer tumor microenvironment that could impact cancer risk.
Michael Flister, assistant professor of physiology at MCW, will lead the five-year grant from the National Cancer Institute. The genetic variants that define the cellular environment of tumors have rarely been the subject of genetic mapping studies and are largely unknown, MCW said in a statement. Researchers will use a rat model of breast cancer to find genes that might inhibit the progression of the disease.
The latest grant follows an $8 million award to MCW in February from the NIH for the development of a rat genome database.