St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is no stranger to major partnerships.
For example, in fall 2022, it announced it had launched a joint funding investment with the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, with the goal of translating vulnerabilities in pediatric cancers into better treatments.
Now, St. Jude has also partnered with the New York-based Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation to provide more young scientists with pediatric cancer research funding.
The two organizations have launched the Damon Runyon–St. Jude Pediatric Cancer Research Fellowship, which is set to fund up to 25 fellowships over eight years, through a $9 million investment. Each fellow is expected to receive four years of funding — $300,000 total — to support a project in basic or translational research that could impact the diagnosis or treatment of at least one pediatric cancer.
“At St. Jude and elsewhere, we need the brightest minds working to advance our mission of finding cures and saving children,” said St. Jude president and CEO Dr. James Downing, in a press release. “This incredible partnership with Damon Runyon will help support gifted researchers in their work to accelerate progress and develop cures for children around the globe.”
The first class of fellows is set to be selected in the fall of 2023 by a committee of leaders in the field, with applications opening in mid-June. Those chosen are expected to receive the benefits associated with Damon Runyon fellowships, like the retirement of up to $100,000 of medical school debt. And they’ll be invited to attend an annual meeting with their colleagues for scientific exchange and potential collaboration with St. Jude faculty and trainees.
The program hopes to address the shortage of top scientists focused on pediatric cancer — who often seek more prevalent opportunities in adult cancer research and the pharmaceutical industry — and it builds on a previous Damon Runyon initiative, which invested in 33 early-career pediatric cancer researchers between 2012 and 2020.
Fellows from this program have gone on to secure additional research grants and prizes from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and private funders; publish research in hundreds of scientific publications; and helped to transform the landscape of pediatric cancer research by providing breakthroughs in the understanding of childhood malignancies.
