Kimmel Foundation for Cancer Research Announces 2006 Grant Recipients.

PALM BEACH, Fla. -- The Sidney Kimmel Foundation for Cancer Research has selected fifteen scientists from across the United States to receive two year grants under the Foundation's on-going Scholar program. A total of 130 talented cancer researchers have been provided with grant money since the Foundation's inception with each receiving a $200,000 award to further a specific cancer research project.

The Kimmel Scholar Awards were created in 1997 to further the careers of gifted, young scientists involved in cancer research. Scientists are selected who show the greatest promise and innovation, but whose careers have not been sufficiently advanced to provide them the critical mass of prior research that typically justifies receiving major awards from the National Cancer Institute and other funding sources.

Sidney Kimmel, the organization's founder and chairman of the board of Jones Apparel Group, meets each year with the Foundation's medical advisory board and observes as the esteemed group of leading cancer doctors narrows down the applicants to the top fifteen. This year there were nearly 200 applications for grants.

Kimmel, selected by BusinessWeek as one of the nation's leading philanthropists, has contributed more than $350 million to cancer centers and cancer research since 1997 and another $100 million to the arts and Jewish continuity.

Many of the exceptional young scientists who have their careers 'jump started' by the Sidney Kimmel Foundation for Cancer Research go on to receive millions of dollars in funding from the NCI and NIH and make significant contributions to the field of cancer research. Many report that they might never have achieved such success without first receiving the Kimmel grant.

This year's Kimmel grant recipients are:

Thijn R. Brummelkamp, Ph.D., Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Cambridge, MA, "Functional characterization of the cancer genome."

Jan A. Burger, M.D., The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, "Cross talk between the B-cell receptor and CXCR-4 chemokine receptors in chronic lymphocytic leukemia: a new role for ZAP-70."

Shridar Ganesan, M.D., Cancer Institute of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ, "Biology of human basal-like breast cancers."

Or Gozani, M.D., Ph.D., Stanford University, Stanford, CA, "ING proteins: linking chromatin modulation to tumor suppression."

Amy A. Kiger, Ph.D., University of California, San Diego, CA, "Roles and regulation of myotubularin-dependent phosphoinositide pathways in cellular differentiation."

Andrew L. Kung, M.D., Ph.D., Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, "Tumor hypoxia: mechanisms of adaptation and opportunities for therapeutic targeting."

Ming Lei, Ph.D., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, "Structural studies of single-stranded telomeric DNA and its binding protein POT1."

Loren Michel, M.D., Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, "Validating the Trop-2 receptor as a target for anti-cancer therapy."

Yanhong Shi, Ph.D., Beckman Research Institute, City of Hope National Medical Center, Duarte, CA, "The role of nuclear receptor TLX signaling in brain tumors."

Kimberly Stegmaier, M.D., Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, "Modulating the 'undruggable' oncoprotein with signature-based small molecule library screening."

E. Alejandro Sweet-Cordero, M.D., Stanford University, Stanford, CA, "Functional genomic analysis of oncogenic K-ras signaling."

David Traver, Ph.D., University of California, San Deigo, CA, "The role of Runx1 in normal and neoplastic hematopoiesis."

Nocola Zanesi, Ph.D., Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, "Mouse models of the most common human cancers."

Xianzheng Zhou, M.D., Ph.D., The University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, "Adoptive cord blood T-Cell therapy of leukemia by the Sleeping Beauty transposon."

Sandra S. Zinkel, M.D., Ph.D., Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, "The role of proapoptotic BID in mediating apoptosis and the DNA damage response in myeloid homeostasis and leukemogenesis."

In addition to the Kimmel Scholar Program, the Sidney Kimmel Foundation for Cancer Research has funded four cancer centers at San Diego, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Thomas Jefferson University and Johns Hopkins University. The gift to Johns Hopkins, $150 million, is the largest gift ever received by that institution. In the area of arts and culture, The Kimmel Foundation has supported the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia as well as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., among others.

For more information about this year's scholars or the Sidney Kimmel Foundation for Cancer Research visit www.kimmel.org/cancerresearch.