Recognized as an outstanding early-career scientist, Trowbridge receives $750,000 in support of high-risk/high-reward cancer research
Bar Harbor, Maine, January 20, 2023 – Jennifer Trowbridge, Ph.D., associate professor and Dattels Family Chair at The Jackson Laboratory, has received a prestigious Emerging Leader Award from The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research. The Foundation presented six of these awards, totaling $4.5 million, to outstanding early-career investigators for projects aimed at addressing unmet needs in cancer research. The Mark Foundation Emerging Leader Awardprogram empowers scientists to take on innovative, high-risk/high-reward projects that have significant potential to improve outcomes for cancer patients.
Trowbridge’s $750,000 award, given over three years, will support her research on stem cells in the blood, with a focus on changes related to aging and the development of leukemia. Her lab’s goal is to identify new targets for treating leukemia.
“This is the fifth year we are encouraging the next generation of oncology superstars through our Mark Foundation Emerging Leader Awards program,” said Ryan Schoenfeld, Ph.D., CEO, The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research. “We are committed to supporting early-career scientists to ensure their continuing contribution to cancer research; these grants will enable researchers to pursue innovative projects that might never launch without our support. We hope that our relationship with these investigators will continue for many years and are looking forward to the results of their research as well as their emergence as leaders in the field.”
Trowbridge received her Ph.D. from the University of Western Ontario and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Dana Farber Cancer Institute before joining JAX in 2012. Her research has garnered numerous awards, including a Leukemia & Lymphoma Society Scholar Award and the Janet Rowley Award from the International Society for Experimental Hematology.
“I am honored to be a recipient of this award from The Mark Foundation, which will be instrumental in launching our research program in a new direction towards identification of targets for blood cancer prevention,” said Trowbridge. “The Foundation’s emphasis on supporting unmet research needs and cutting-edge science is incredibly important to patients and families affected by cancer.”
Since launching the program in 2018, The Mark Foundation has awarded more than $29 million to 34 early-career scientists with Emerging Leader Awards. The 2023 award recipients are:
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Jennifer Trowbridge, Ph.D., The Jackson Laboratory, Uncovering susceptibility and resilience mechanisms in blood cancer development
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Samuel Bakhoum, M.D., Ph.D., Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK)
Examining the link between chromosomal instability and epigenetic reprogramming in cancer -
Jose Javier Bravo-Cordero, Ph.D., The Tisch Cancer Center at Mount Sinai, Impact of dormant cancer cells on the brain microenvironment
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Lydia Lynch, Ph.D., Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Identification of specific dietary fats that fuel cancer
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Aaron Meyer, Ph.D., UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, Tracking and reactivating humoral immunity through systems serology
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Mikhail Shapiro, Ph.D., California Institute of Technology, In situ dynamics of distant metastases
About The Jackson Laboratory
The Jackson Laboratory is an independent, nonprofit biomedical research institution with a National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center and nearly 3,000 employees in locations across the United States (Maine, Connecticut, California), Japan and China. Its mission is to discover precise genomic solutions for disease and empower the global biomedical community in the shared quest to improve human health. For more information, please visit www.jax.org.
About The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research
The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research actively partners with scientists, research institutions, and philanthropic organizations around the world to accelerate research that will transform the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer. Since 2017, The Mark Foundation has awarded more than $190 million in grants to enable innovative basic, translational, and clinical cancer research, including drug discovery. In 2022, The Mark Foundation received an additional $500 million commitment to fund cutting-edge cancer research in its first decade. The Mark Foundation also has a robust and growing portfolio of investments in oncology companies developing novel therapeutics and diagnostics. Through its research and venture arms, The Mark Foundation supports projects throughout their life cycle to ensure their highest chance of success in impacting the lives of patients with breakthroughs in cancer care. To learn more please visit www.TheMarkFoundation.org.