The 2024 class of awardees will receive more than $6 million in funding to accelerate groundbreaking cancer research.

BOSTON, MA – The Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research at the Mass General Cancer Center today announced the selection of 19 scientists who have been awarded a combined $6 million in funding. These competitive awards, which are granted annually, were established to recognize the trailblazing efforts of Krantz Center scientists and accelerate ideas, projects and initiatives with the potential to fundamentally change how cancer is diagnosed and treated.

Philanthropists Jason and Keely Krantz, who, in September of 2023, made the largest research-directed gift in the Mass General Cancer Center’s 34-year history, included annual funding for innovative and collaborative research projects, advanced technologies to support cancer research and an endowment to ensure sustainability. The class of awardees announced for 2024 reflects the Krantz Center’s commitment to supporting cutting-edge research.

The awards are distributed to individual investigators and research teams at the Krantz Center in four tiers: Quantum Awards (with up to $2 million in funding to support research poised to have a definitive impact on fundamental cancer research, diagnostics or therapeutics); Breakthrough Awards (with up to $1 million for transformative projects based on research findings poised for expansion and scale); Spark Awards (with up to $100,000 to test exploratory research with the potential to yield major initiatives); and Technology Support (to purchase state-of-the-art technologies to advance leading-edge laboratory research).

The 2024 recipients were determined through a rigorous selection process which included internal and external scientific review. The final decisions were based on the individual project’s ability to have outsized impact on the future of cancer care and treatment. The number of awards presented each year depends upon the diversity and merit of the proposals submitted.

“The Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research is home to some of the world’s most innovative and creative cancer investigators,” said Jason Krantz, founder and executive chairman of Definitive Healthcare. “These elite researchers come to Mass General because they want to be involved in the game-changing research that can have a definitive impact on the tools and techniques used to combat cancer. The Krantz Awards are designed to accelerate this critical science, with the goal of bringing lifesaving therapies and diagnostics to patients across the globe as quickly as possible. As the awards program enters its second year, we are eager to see what the recipients are able to accomplish.”

2024 Krantz Award Recipients

The Quantum Award was presented to the team of Lloyd Bod, PhD, William L. Hwang, MD, PhD, David T. Ting, MD, and Alexandra-Chloe Villani, PhD. The team will receive $2 million over two years to evaluate the severe immune-related adverse events (irAEs) that can accompany even the most successful cancer immunotherapies, seeking to separate the benefit from side effects and enhance the successful treatment of multiple cancers. This collaboration brings together Dr. Bod, a leading immunologist; Dr. Villani, an authority in cancer immunotherapy whose team has collected one of the world’s most comprehensive libraries of biopsies from patients who suffered autoimmune complications of cancer immunotherapy; and Drs. Hwang and Ting, who specialize in spatial transcriptomics – a powerful technology capable of analyzing the location of immune cells in tissue biopsies. Together, this cross-disciplinary team will pursue a deeper understanding of autoimmune complications in cancer immunotherapy in the hope of finding ways to avoid such complications while preserving anti-cancer efficacy.

The following teams were selected to receive Breakthrough Awards, which include $1 million per team over two years:

  • Wilhelm Haas, PhD, Othon Iliopoulos, MD, and Mo Motamedi, PhD, will study the molecular mechanisms that establish belzutifan resistance in patients with Von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) disease and leverage these findings into meaningful strategies for overcoming resistance in this difficult-to-treat family of kidney, brain and other cancers.
  • Esther Rheinbay, PhD, and Miguel N. Rivera, MD, will systematically evaluate the role of intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) within critical cancer-related proteins, a fundamental new insight into cancer biology with the potential to launch novel therapies targeting cancers that are not currently treatable.
  • Priscilla Brastianos, MD, PhD, and Mario L. Suvà, MD, PhD, two experts in primary and metastatic brain tumors are working together to understand the spatial interactions between cancer cells and immune cells within the brain, with the goal of informing the development of next-generation immune-based treatments.

The following scientists were selected to receive Spark Awards, which include $100,000 in funding per recipient:

  • Francesca Gazzaniga, PhD, to study the role of the bacterial microbiome in cancer immunotherapy.
  • Konrad Hochedlinger, PhD, to use mutant histone proteins to understand deregulated chromatin that defines a subset of human cancer.
  • Luca Pinello, PhD, to apply AI-based algorithms to dissect patterns involved in the aberrant regulation of cancer genes.
  • Peter Miller, MD, PhD, and Eugene Oh, PhD, to explore drug combinations targeting the PPMID gene, effective in multiple cancers with a certain mutation.
  • Gad Getz, PhD, Doğa Gülhan, PhD, and John Iafrate, MD, PhD, to develop high-throughput, low-cost methods for tracking cancer gene mutations in the blood.

In addition to the research-focused awards, there are grants for advanced technologies through the Technology Support Fund. This year’s awards include funds to support the purchase of a cell sorter, vi-cell counter, microplate reader, multicolor ddPCR system and nanoparticle size reader.

“There remains so much to be uncovered when it comes to understanding the fundamental biology that drives different cancers, and so many breakthroughs have come from bringing together scientists and physicians with complementary expertise to tackle a shared difficult challenge,” said Daniel Haber, MD, PhD, director of the Mass General Cancer Center and the Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research. “The recipients of the 2024 Krantz Center awards are some of the most talented and creative researchers across multiple disciplines, and I’m deeply impressed with the collaborative projects that they’ve put together, and the tough problems that they are taking on together. These projects have the potential for major impact in how we understand and how we will treat cancer in the future”.

Additional information about this year’s awardees and their research can be found here.

About the Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research

With 53 independent laboratory-based faculty members with appointments across different departments at Mass General and Harvard Medical School, and more than 500 postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, trainees and technicians, the Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research is home to some of the brightest scientific minds all focused on one goal: understanding the fundamental biology that drives cancer and applying that knowledge toward its eradication. Investigators have established an international reputation for scientific excellence, and for collaborative partnerships that bridge from basic research to patient care.

About Mass General Brigham

Mass General Brigham is an integrated academic health care system, uniting great minds to solve the hardest problems in medicine for our communities and the world. Mass General Brigham connects a full continuum of care across a system of academic medical centers, community and specialty hospitals, a health insurance plan, physician networks, community health centers, home care, and long-term care services. Mass General Brigham is a nonprofit organization committed to patient care, research, teaching, and service to the community. In addition, Mass General Brigham is one of the nation’s leading biomedical research organizations with several Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals. For more information, please visit massgeneralbrigham.org

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