UNC Lineberger researcher Stephen Hursting, PhD, MPH is a recipient of the NCI Outstanding Investigator Award for 2015. Hursting was in the first class of recipients of the seven-year grant award, which supports investigators with outstanding records of productivity in cancer research by providing extended funding stability and encouraging investigators to continue or embark on projects of unusual potential in cancer research.
Stephen Hursting, PhD, MPH, a UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center member, a professor in the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health Department of Nutrition and a researcher at the Nutrition Research Institute in Kannapois, has received the NCI Outstanding Investigator Award for 2015.
Hursting was in the first class of recipients of the seven-year grant award, which supports investigators with outstanding records of productivity in cancer research by providing extended funding stability and encouraging investigators to continue or embark on projects of unusual potential in cancer research.
In the first year alone, the grant totals$762,608. Hursting plans to use the funding to study the mechanisms underlying the obesity-cancer link. Specifically, he plans to address four questions to try to arrive at new, effective interventions to offset obesity-linked increases in cancer:
- Does moderate weight loss alone, or with with other interventions, reverse the cancerous effects of obesity?
- What are the mechanisms of obesity-linked chemotherapeutic resistance?
- What are the targets and strategies for offsetting the pro-metastatic effects of obesity?
- What new targets for offsetting the effects of obesity can be identified by disrupting the “cross-talk” between fat cells, macrophages and epithelial cells?
For more information on the grant award, go to this website.