Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center neuroscientist Dr. Eric Holland has received a National Cancer Institute Outstanding Investigator Award. The NCI created these grants to provide “extended funding stability for projects of exceptional potential in cancer research.”
The seven-year, $7 million grant will support Holland’s investigations into different classes of genetic mutations and how they can cause cancer. Though his work focuses on the role that these mutations play in brain cancers, Holland hopes to gain a wider view of how cancer develops and progresses. He also aims to pinpoint new treatment strategies by studying specific genes that have been mutated in distinct ways in tumors.
“If a gene really matters — if that one gene actually is sufficient [to cause cancer], then not only can it teach you about cancer biology, but it can also provide therapeutic insights,” said Holland, who heads the center’s Human Biology Division and directs Seattle Translational Tumor Research.
Outstanding Investigator Awards are designed to support large, mature labs to do more science and less grant writing, Holland said. His will allow his team to follow important lines of investigation even if they’re risky or beyond current scientific dogma.
“The real reward is that people who spent their entire careers learning about science are free to do it now,” he said. “At a certain point in one’s career, you can test things that are a little outside the box.”
Our genes encode the proteins that make our cells and biological functions run. Mutations to a gene — changes to the letters that make up our DNA code — can change the function of the protein it encodes. Sometimes mutations hobble a protein and prevent it from doing its job; sometimes they give it new activities or allow it to function when it shouldn’t. Depending on what the protein usually does, any of these changes could contribute to cancer.
