Two early-career scientists at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have received prestigious grants to further their prostate cancer research.
Alexandra “Alex” Corella, a graduate research assistant, won a $25,000, one-year fellowship from the Ford Foundation Fellowship Programs, which are administered by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. She will use the funding to complete her doctoral dissertation research on small-cell neuroendocrine prostate cancer, or SCNPC, an aggressive malignancy that doesn’t respond well to conventional therapies.
“I am very excited and grateful to be receiving the Ford Dissertation Fellowship, which will provide support in my final year of my Ph.D. and will open doors for me in the next stages of my career,” said Corella, one of 38 dissertation fellowship recipients this year.
Dr. Sander Frank, a postdoctoral research fellow, received a three-year training fellowship of more than $210,000 from the National Institutes of Health to study how mutations in genes that control DNA repair promote tumor progression and whether these mutations may be exploited for targeted therapies. The NIH established the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award for Individual Postdoctoral Fellows, otherwise known as an F32 award, to help postdocs transition to independent research careers.
“I am grateful to receive a highly competitive F32 fellowship and am thrilled to be part of a very supportive prostate cancer research group at the Hutch,” Frank said. “Over the next three years, I will be able to continue my professional development and work on a great research project that will hopefully lead to new therapy options for prostate cancer patients in the future.”
Both Corella and Frank work in the laboratory of Dr. Peter Nelson, who holds the Endowed Chair for Prostate Cancer Research at Fred Hutch. Nelson co-leads the center’s multidisciplinary Program in Prostate Cancer Research. Frank is co-mentored by Dr. Valeri Vasioukhin, whose Fred Hutch lab studies model systems of prostate cancer progression.
