The scarcity of funding for gastric cancer research discourages talented early-career investigators from focusing on this cancer type. Foundation leaders recognized this need and partnered with the American Gastroenterological Association to create a permanent Research Scholar Award. The endowed award ensures continuous and strategic investment in promising young investigators and their work to discover better diagnostics, treatments and a cure for gastric cancer.
MARTINA MOLGORA, PhD
Washington University School of Medicine
Impact of TREM2 on Gastric Cancer
“It’s important to find new therapies for gastric cancer, and I believe TREM2 might be a promising therapeutic target … TREM2 has been studied extensively in neurodegenerative diseases, but it wasn’t thought to be significant in cancer until next-generation cell-sequencing technologies revealed a possible role for the receptor in tumor growth a few years ago”
SAMUEL J. KLEMPNER, MD
Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital
Deep Characterization of Gastric Ascites to Inform Peritoneal Therapies
“One of the biggest knowledge gaps in gastric cancer is the peritoneum. This funding will allow us to generate preliminary data and take it to the next step, potentially identifying new therapeutic vulnerabilities to exploit in the mission to help improve the prognosis for patients with metastatic gastric cancer.”
JOSE SAENZ, MD, PHD
Washington University School of Medicine
Alterations in the Gastric Landscape and the Effects of Helicobacter pylori Pathogenesis
“I would like to see my research lend insight into better understanding how Helicobacter pylori adapt to the stomach environment. We need to fundamentally explore these early interactions if we want to be able to identify high-risk patients and improve gastric cancer mortality, which is unacceptably high in the United States—and worldwide.”
MOHAMAD EL-ZAATARI, PHD
University of Michigan
Role of Myeloid Cells in the Transition from Chronic Inflammation to Gastric Pre-neoplasia
“Many gastric cancers start off with immune cells attacking our own ‘self’ cells”. This “autoimmune” process by B cells had not been previously considered to play a part in gastric cancer. We are investigating this further, so we can understand the exact role of B cells, because they clearly play a role.”
Eligibility requirements and applications guidelines are available at gastro.org.
Accelerating Research Toward a Cure
Ongoing research by talented young investigators is making critical inroads to understanding the disease better and improving patient treatments while working to prevent or develop a cure for stomach cancer.