The national leadership of the American Cancer Society, the nation’s leading voluntary health organization — and the largest non-government, not-for-profit funding source of cancer research in the United States — recently announced 84 research grants, totaling $46,352,380, to begin January 1, 2002.

“The American Cancer Society is the only private funding source that can claim 32 Nobel laureates among its recipients,” said Harmon J. Eyre, MD, national chief medical officer for the Society. “We have spent more than $2.3 billion funding scientific investigation and have a proven record of identifying the best and most fruitful research ideas. These most recent grants will help the Society in its aggressive pursuit of better methods of preventing, detecting, and treating cancer and – ultimately – finding a cure.”

This year for the first time the Society awarded two grants exceeding $2 million each: one to Rose Maly, MD, MSPH, University of California, Los Angeles for her study of “Underserved Breast Cancer Patients: Psychosocial Determinants of Treatment”, in the amount of $2,181,000, and the second to James Sargent, MD, Dartmouth College, who will conduct a five-year, $2,468,000 study on “Preventing Teen Smoking by Restricting Movie Exposure”.

The grants also include a new American Cancer Society Research Professorship awarded to Graham Walker, PhD of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for his basic research on the “SOS” DNA repair system in bacteria. The ACS Research Professorship, which is the Society’s most prestigious award, is given to outstanding mid-career scientists who have made seminal contributions to their field. The award provides five years of unrestricted research support at a level of $80,000 per year, with the option of one five-year renewal. Dr. Walker’s appointment brings the total number of ACS Research Professors to 21. There are also eight American Cancer Society Clinical Research Professors.

“This award is a remarkable honor, and what touches me more than anything else is that the American Cancer Society recognizes and acknowledges the fundamental research that the very talented individuals in my laboratory have done over these many years,” said Dr. Walker. “This fundamental research, by its very nature, generally, does not make the immediate connection to cancer in humans. What it does do is provide a basic understanding of the important molecular processes and strategies that are important for life. Other investigators have built on these fundamental insights in their research on cancer as a human disease.” The Research Professorships of Christine Guthrie, PhD, University of California, Los Angeles and Robert Eisenman, PhD, Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center, were each renewed for an additional five year term.

In addition to Dr. Maly’s grant, other Targeted Research Grants Directed at Poor and Underserved Populations went to: Nabith Asal, PhD, Morehouse College, for “Obesity, Nutrition and Renal Carcinoma in Blacks and Whites”; Charles Bennett, MD, PhD, Northwestern University, for “Quality of Life Among Inner-city White and African American Prostate Patients”; Elizabeth Hahn, MA, Evanston Northwestern Healthcare Research Institute, for “Computerized Quality of Life Assessment in Low Literacy Latinos”; Celia Patricia Kaplan, DrPH, University of California, San Francisco, for “A Follow-up Study of Health Behaviors among Vietnamese Adolescents”. The awards also included: 42 Research Scholar Grants for Beginning Investigators, 25 Postdoctoral Fellowships, four Clinical Research Training Awards, three Physician Training Awards in Preventive Medicine, and two Research Scholar Grants in Psychosocial, Behavioral or Health Policy and Services Research.

The American Cancer Society is the nationwide community-based voluntary health organization dedicated to eliminating cancer as a major health problem by preventing cancer, saving lives and diminishing suffering from cancer, through research, education, advocacy and service. For information about cancer, call toll-free anytime 1-800-ACS-2345 or visit the American Cancer Society Web site at www.cancer.org.