News Release

UNC researcher receives AACR and Kure It Kidney Cancer research grant

Grant and Award Announcement

University of North Carolina Health Care

William Y. Kim, UNC Lineberger

image: UNC researcher William Y. Kim, M.D., was awarded a American Association for Cancer Research and Kure It grant for kidney cancer research. view more 

Credit: UNC Lineberger

The American Association for Cancer Research and Kure It have announced that William Y. Kim, MD, will receive a 2012 AACR-Kure It Grant for Kidney Cancer Research.

Kim, assistant professor in the departments of medicine and genetics at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and member of UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, will receive $250,000 during the two-year grant term. In addition, Kim will receive complimentary registration to the AACR Annual Meeting 2013, to be held April 6-10 in Washington, D.C., and will be recognized at the Annual Grants Reception and Dinner on Tuesday, April 9.

These grants are designed to provide support for innovative translational kidney cancer research designed to improve the survival and quality of life of patients with kidney cancer and, in turn, lead to individualized therapeutic options for the treatment or development of promising new kidney cancer therapies.

Kim's project, "Defining the RCC [Renal Cell Carcinoma] Kinome for Target Discovery and Individualized Therapy," aims to personalize kinase therapy based on the patient's kidney tumor.

"Despite the fact that kidney cancer has very few activating mutations in kinases, they can be activated through alternate means and remain tenable therapeutic targets in renal cell carcinoma. We will use a novel, quantitative mass spectroscopy-based assay developed at University of North Carolina to assess the global activation state of the kinome and identify both novel as well as currently actionable targets," said Kim.

The expert scientific review committee, assembled by the AACR, received 44 high-caliber applications from independent investigators who proposed to develop and study new ideas and approaches that will have a direct application and relevance to patients with kidney cancer.

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James W. Mier, M.D. , associate professor at Harvard Medical School in the division of hematology and oncology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston, Mass., will also receive the award. Mier's research will support the ongoing translational kidney cancer research at Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center.

The AACR and Kure It are committed to collaboratively sustain the grant to award funding to the most promising kidney cancer research project.


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