NEW YORK – The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center said on Wednesday that it has been awarded approximately $3 million from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) to establish a new spatial genomics core facility.
Led by Nicholas Navin, the Advanced Spatial Genomics Core aims to “connect the fields of pathology and cell biology with genomics, providing invaluable resources with the potential to dramatically improve the diagnosis and treatment of cancer and other diseases,” MD Anderson said in a statement.
The funding to establish the spatial genomics core is part of a bigger awards package the center received from CPRIT that includes nine grants totaling over $21.4 million.
In addition to the spatial genomics core, the CPRIT grants will also allow MD Anderson to recruit new faculty members, establish a core facility for cancer decision science, and promote oncology research across the institution.
“We are enormously appreciative of CPRIT’s support of impactful cancer research initiatives at MD Anderson,” Peter Pisters, the center's president, said in a statement. “These new core facilities will help advance important areas of research in spatial biology and decision science, while the additional grants will advance groundbreaking work on the microbiome, cancer interception, and novel therapies.”