Houston scientists gather at BRC to celebrate grants funding cancer research
Rice researchers among those honored by CPRIT

BY JESSICA STARK
Rice News staff

Less than a week after its grand opening and a day before it hosted a conference for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Rice’s BioScience Research Collaborative (BRC) welcomed the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) for a ceremony celebrating more than $35 million in grants for cancer research.

	JEFF FITLOW
	Pictured from left are Rebekah Drezek, associate professor in bioengineering and in electrical and computer engineering; Rebecca Richards-Kortum, the Stanley C. Moore Professor of Bioengineering and a professor of electrical and computer engineering; Charles Tate, CPRIT board member; Bill Gimson, CPRIT executive director; Sallie Keller, the William and Stephanie Sick Dean of the George R. Brown School of Engineering and professor of statistics; and Jimmy Mansour, CPRIT founding chairman.

Rice researchers landed more than
$2 million in funding through the awards, which were announced in January. Rebecca Richards-Kortum, Rice’s Stanley C. Moore Professor of Bioengineering, won $1.8 million to develop a new imaging system for the early detection of oral cancer. Awarded under the “individual investigator” category, the grant was one of only six to receive more than $1.5 million.

Rebekah Drezek, a professor in bioengineering and in electrical and computer engineering, received one of the 13 awards in the “high-impact/high-risk” category for work in collaboration with Aaron Foster, an assistant professor in the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy, a joint program of Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Children’s Hospital and the Methodist Research Institute. Drezek garnered the maximum award of $200,000 to investigate a new cancer therapy that combines the advantages of both immunotherapy and light-activated photothermal therapy.

Other Houston recipients attending the ceremony at the BRC were Baylor College of Medicine; Ingeneron Inc.; the Methodist Hospital Research Institute; the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston; the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer System; and Visualase Inc.

Former Rice President Malcolm Gillis, a CPRIT ambassador, helped present checks to some of the awardees at the ceremony.