The Prostate Cancer Foundation in Santa Monica, Calif., said Friday it awarded nearly $10 million to bankroll 10 innovative research projects into the disease. The Challenge Awards are valued at $9.8 million over three years and were selected from 59 proposals from cancer centers around the world by a peer-review panel at the Southern California foundation.
"These newly funded programs form an excellent, patient-centric research portfolio," said Howard Soule, executive vice president and chief science officer for PCF. "With reductions in federal funding for prostate cancer research, it's imperative for us to seek the most promising research ideas and fund them with the goal of changing clinical practice and improving outcomes for patients with advanced prostate cancer."
The projects selected by the PCF do not currently enjoy federal funding and are considered "highly innovative research with potential near-term patient benefit," the foundation said in a written statement.
The grants went to labs studying areas including nanotechnology, imaging and chemotherapy compounds such as Zytiga and LX184.
The institutions receiving grants were: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden Hospital, University of California, San Francisco, UW Carbone Cancer Center, the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins Cancer and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
