CARBONDALE, Ill. – A researcher at Southern Illinois University Carbondale will use a $445,500 federal grant to explore ways of turning off a genetic switch that allows rare but devasting cancer to progress in children.
Judith Davie, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology in the SIU School of Medicine, is receiving a three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The grant will help her find genetic-based answers in the battle against rhabdomyosarcoma (pronounced rab-doe-my-oh-sahr-coma), a pediatric cancer that arises from changes to the DNA of normal skeletal muscle cells.
The grant will help Davie, along with graduate and undergraduate students, use DNA sequencing data and tumor samples from cancer patients to run laboratory experiments. The work will build on Davie’s previous discovery of a new kind of oncogene, a gene that can cause a cell to grow out of control, possibly leading to cancer.
Source: SIU prof gets $445K grant for genetic research on a devastating childhood cancer
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