12 shortlisted teams
Announcing the teams shortlisted for a Cancer Grand Challenges award
Scientific creativity on a global scale
Team CaPTr
CHALLENGE: Cancer cell plasticity
TEAM LEAD: Andrew Feinberg (Johns Hopkins University)
Combining physics, mathematics, biology and genomics to identify and target the cells driving cancer plasticity.
Team COMBAT
CHALLENGE: Obesity, physical activity and cancer
TEAM LEAD: Lydia Lynch (Harvard Medical School)
Exploring obesity-related cancer risk and mechanisms to reduce this risk through the metabolic lens.
Team decrypTEd
CHALLENGE: Retrotransposable elements
TEAM LEAD: Didier Trono (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)
Multidimensional deciphering of how transposable elements and their controllers shape tumour evolution.
Team KOODAC
CHALLENGE: Solid tumours in children
TEAM LEAD: Yael Mossé (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia)
Developing oncoprotein degraders to target the drivers of solid tumours in children.
Team MATCHMAKERS
CHALLENGE: T-cell receptors
TEAM LEAD: Michael Birnbaum (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
Taking an integrated approach to understand how T cells recognise tumours, to pave the way for personalised immunotherapies.
Team OPTIMAL
CHALLENGE: Cancer cell plasticity
TEAM LEAD: Ronald Evans (The Salk Institute for Biological Studies)
Understanding and targeting the pathways involved in cancer cell plasticity to overcome therapeutic resistance.
Team Pandora
CHALLENGE: Early-onset cancers
TEAM LEAD: Dean Jones (Emory University)
Interrogating the exposome to reveal the mechanisms linking lifetime exposures to early-onset cancers.
Team PLASTICITY-Tx
CHALLENGE: Cancer cell plasticity
TEAM LEAD: Cédric Blanpain (Université libre de Bruxelles)
Constructing a catalogue of cell states to uncover the mechanisms that drive cancer cell plasticity and reveal new therapeutic approaches against cancer.
Team PROSPECT
CHALLENGE: Early-onset cancers
TEAM LEADS: Andrew Chan (Massachusetts General Hospital) and Yin Cao (Washington University in St. Louis)
Uncovering the mechanisms linking lifetime exposures to early-onset colorectal cancer and testing new strategies to combat this cancer type.
Team PROTECT
CHALLENGE: Solid tumours in children
TEAM LEAD: Stefan Pfister (Hopp Children's Cancer Center Heidelberg (KiTZ))
Establishing a platform to test and develop drugs that target the undrugged drivers of childhood solid tumours.
Team RESCuE
CHALLENGE: Chemotherapy-induced neurotoxicities
TEAM LEADS: Michelle Monje (Stanford Medicine) and Alison Lloyd (University College London)
Understanding the biology that underpins chemotherapy-induced neurotoxicities to address the cause, consequence and cure of these side effects.
Team SAMBAI
CHALLENGE: Cancer inequities
TEAM LEAD: Melissa Davis (Morehouse School of Medicine)
Creating an unprecedented resource to define the factors that cause and influence disparate outcomes in diverse underserved populations.
What comes next?
Shortlisted teams will receive seed funding to help them build their full applications and will attend an interview with the Cancer Grand Challenges Scientific Committee in December 2023. Winning teams – to be announced in March 2024 – will each receive up to $25m, empowering them to rise above the traditional boundaries of geography and discipline to ultimately change outcomes for people with cancer.