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ANNUAL REPORT 2020 T the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, We Fund a High-Risk, High-Reward Cancer Research

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ANNUAL REPORT 2020 T the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, We Fund a High-Risk, High-Reward Cancer Research ANNUAL REPORT 2020 t the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, we fund A high-risk, high-reward cancer research. We identify and enable young scientists who are brilliant, brave and bold enough to go where others haven’t. 3 A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT & CEO Michael and Yadira are just two of the Damon Runyon scientists whose research–and life–was affected by COVID-19. When the extent of the pandemic’s impact on scientific research became evident, the Scientific Committee Now, more than six months later, our scientists of our Board of Directors immediately began report that this support was crucial for enabling discussing how we could support our scientists them to reopen their laboratories and resume at the most critical points of their careers. Thanks their research. For many, returning to full BY ITS NATURE, productivity may take months as the pandemic FOR MANY, continues, but our scientists are undaunted. SCIENCE REQUIRES They have adapted by working in shifts either RESILIENCE. WHEN RETURNING TO FULL early mornings, late nights, or on weekends to maintain social distancing guidelines, and by EXPERIMENTS FAIL OR PRODUCTIVITY MAY meeting with their colleagues and collaborators virtually rather than in person. RESULTS CONFOUND TAKE MONTHS AS THE These are the future leaders in all areas of YUNG S. LIE, PhD EXPECTATIONS, PANDEMIC CONTINUES, cancer research—our mission is to give them the support they need to break past the y its nature, science requires resilience. SCIENTISTS MUST BUT OUR SCIENTISTS barriers and obstacles that lie in their path. We When experiments fail or results are inspired by their fierce determination and confound expectations, scientists must ARE UNDAUNTED. B QUICKLY ADAPT TO resolve to push cancer research forward, no quickly adapt to find a new path forward. matter what challenges they face. FIND A NEW PATH to their proactive leadership and vision, we have The road to becoming a scientist requires no been able to offer an additional investment of less perseverance. Navigating the gauntlet of FORWARD. nearly $1.2 million to our Damon Runyon Fellows graduate school, postdoctoral training, and and Physician-Scientists in the final years of their building an independent research program with cancer but with COVID-19. In this annual award to protect their progress. all present challenges and roadblocks of their report, you’ll hear from Michael W. Drazer, MD, own. Damon Runyon’s awards are intentionally on his experience as a physician during the designed to offer the most promising scientists earliest days of the pandemic, and Yadira M. the resources and support needed to clear Soto-Feliciano, PhD, on how she harnessed the these early career hurdles. resilience and fortitude built up over the course But many of our scientists in this vulnerable of her career to remain productive even while stage of their careers found themselves facing her laboratory was closed. a new and unexpected challenge this spring when the pandemic closed research institutions across the nation. Experiments had to be paused, cell lines frozen, analyses postponed. Physician-scientists had to leave their benches for the frontline, to care for patients not only 4 5 SCIENTIST SPOTLIGHT YADIRA M. SOTO- FELICIANO, PhD taught me the importance of OF having good mentors during every stage of your career. We asked Yadira about her The mentality back home was and was accepted to my scientific journey and what to get a job in the industry dream PhD program at the in Puerto Massachusetts Institute of Rico when Technology (MIT). I remember SCIENTIFIC you finished vividly how tough it was from college. But both financial and personal kind of leader she hopes to I made the be in her future laboratory. big decision SOHN FELLOW to take a DISCOVERY Epigenetics DR: TELL US ABOUT job in a bioengineering lab in Boston INSTITUTION YOUR SCIENTIFIC standpoints, but at the end, The Rockefeller University JOURNEY, WHICH HAS as a research technician, it really paid off. which felt risky. I was moving PROJECT TITLE COVERED MANY MILES “Dissecting the role of Menin AND REQUIRED SOME thousands of miles away to WHAT KIND OF in acute leukemia” LEAPS OF FAITH. a place where a different LABORATORY language was spoken, to ENVIRONMENT DO YOU YADIRA: One day, a work in a laboratory where I WANT TO CREATE WHEN chemistry professor showed didn’t know anyone! I’m very YOU LEAD YOUR OWN up to my dad’s car painting happy I did that—I learned RESEARCH GROUP? shop in Puerto Rico as a many things, made great client. My dad told him, “Oh, professional relationships, I want to foster an FOLLOWING my daughter just started as a environment in my group that Mutations leading to errors chemistry student in the same will make people comfortable in how DNA stacks inside the university.” This opened the asking questions. It sounds THE chromosome are associated door for me to do research in with many diseases, including his laboratory. Early on, that cancer. Damon Runyon-Sohn Fellow Yadira M. Soto- WINDING Feliciano, PhD, wants to understand this process on a fundamental level to reveal new opportunities to thwart cancer. PATH “I think basic research is critically important, particularly in cancer biology, because it helps us dissect the roots of the problems that cause disease,” she explains. 6 7 SCIENTIST SPOTLIGHT supported by great mentors along the way. I want to use those advantages I’ve had to help other scientists from underrepresented backgrounds. I want them trivial and simple, but the to know that there are these connections have led lab can be an intimidating opportunities in science for to scientifi c collaborations environment. As someone them, there are people who and important discoveries I WANT TO USE [THE] who has faced the challenges look like them, and they in cancer biology and other ADVANTAGES I’VE HAD TO EVEN HAVING ALL THE CARDS STACKED HELP OTHER SCIENTISTS AGAINST ME, I WAS ABLE TO DO IT. FROM UNDERREPRESENTED of building a scientifi c can get to these places fi elds. The Foundation BACKGROUNDS. I WANT career, I am also thinking themselves. also makes an additional of ways to help the next investment in a select group THEM TO KNOW THAT THERE generation of scientists. HOW DOES DAMON of fellows to facilitate the RUNYON transition from postdoctoral ARE OPPORTUNITIES IN PREPARE training to a junior faculty YOU FOR position. CHALLENGING SCIENCE FOR THEM. MOMENTS IN WHAT MOMENT HAVE A SCIENTIFIC YOU BEEN MOST PROUD CAREER? OF AS A DAMON RUNYON FELLOW? Damon Runyon gives us the I think the proudest fi nancial support achievement during my for our salaries fellowship has been writing and research- and submitting a fi rst-author related expenses, manuscript this year when and also provides New York City shut down a wide network due to the pandemic. My of peers, from husband and I live in a one- clinicians to PhDs bedroom apartment with our in different career two-year-old son. Without Even though as a Latina stages, that otherwise would any childcare assistance and woman in science, I’ve not be really hard to reach. In spending only an hour a day had a straightforward path my personal experience, in front of my computer, I was to where I am today, I still able to prepare the fi gures, consider myself privileged write drafts, and email with in the sense that I’ve been collaborators to submit the manuscript. Even having all the cards stacked against me, I was able to do it. 8 9 SCIENTIST SPOTLIGHT MICHAEL W. DRAZER, MD SINGLE-MINDED DEDICATION TO UNCOVERING THE GENETIC BASIS OF THE PANDEMIC HAS BLOOD CANCERS EXACERBATED THE esearchers recently We asked Dr. Drazer to PHYSICIAN-SCIENTIST DAY-TO-DAY UNCERTAINTIES discovered that at discuss the challenges of Cancer Genetics least 13 percent conducting research during R INSTITUTION [...] BUT I’VE STAYED of all blood cancers are a pandemic. The University of Chicago caused by mutations that are FOCUSED ON MY LONG-TERM passed from generation to MICHAEL: I was raised on PROJECT TITLE generation within families. a small family farm in Indiana, “Defi ning leukemogenic mechanisms in hereditary Damon Runyon Physician- and I’ve always been struck RESEARCH GOALS AND hematologic malignancies” Scientist Michael W. Drazer, by how the uncertainty MD, is investigating the of farming mirrors the THE BELIEF THAT THIS WILL cellular mechanisms that give uncertainty of scientifi c rise to these blood cancers research. Both disciplines IMPACT PATIENT LIVES. with the goal of developing require a single-minded earlier diagnostic approaches and therapies. 10 11 SCIENTIST SPOTLIGHT immunocompromised and cancer syndromes. We more susceptible to the want physicians to realize dedication and an ability to life-threatening effects This irreplaceable collection that this is a problem, so Award is transformational respond to challenges that of the coronavirus. I had of high-tech patient patients aren’t given false because it allows me to look are often beyond our control. to protect those patients “avatars” is, I believe, the reassurances and are offered for those answers even if it When I was in second grade, without compromising the largest of its kind. proper treatments earlier. takes years. The Foundation’s for example, our farm effi cacy of their treatments. This could save lives and leadership is clearly invested fl ooded unexpectedly–my Some interventions, such HOW HAVE YOU improve the care of their in us as people and has been dad and I stayed up all night as stem cell transplants, ADJUSTED YOUR family members. unwavering in its support even digging a trench, trying to are extraordinarily time- APPROACH TO sensitive, so our teams had RESEARCH? during this uncertain time.
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