JUNE 16, 2022, NEW YORK – Ludwig Cancer Research congratulates Ludwig Princeton Associate Director Eileen White on her selection as team leader for a $25 million Cancer Grand Challenges award to tackle cachexia, a debilitating wasting condition associated with advanced cancers that worsens patient prognosis and quality of life. Though it contributes heavily to cancer mortality, cachexia is poorly understood and essentially untreatable.
In partnership with Weill Cornell Medicine’s Marcus DaSilva Goncalves and Tobias Janowitz of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, White will lead a network of scientists based in the U.S. and U.K. known as the CANCAN (Cancer Cachexia Action Network) team to explore the biological mechanisms of cachexia and identify potential therapies for its treatment. The CANCAN team is one of four selected in the latest round of Cancer Grand Challenges awards, each of which will receive $25 million.
Funded by Cancer Research UK and the U.S. National Cancer Institute, the Cancer Grand Challenges awards now support more than 700 researchers and advocates working in eleven teams located in ten countries to find creative solutions to the ten toughest challenges of cancer research and care. The CANCAN team will seek to build a “virtual cancer institute” dedicated to tacking cachexia, drawing together clinicians, advocates and scientists with expertise in cancer, metabolism, immunology and other biomedical fields at 14 institutions in the U.S. and U.K.
We have no doubt White and her colleagues in the CANCAN team will bring extraordinary creativity to solving the intractable problem of cachexia, bringing new hope and, eventually, relief to those afflicted by cancer.
