American Cancer Society Institutional Research Grants

Award Information
Awardees

The aim of the American Cancer Society Institute Research Grant is to offer funding to support Assistant Professors and Instructors, including highly qualified physicians, physician-scientists, population-based or basic/translational scientists, who are dedicated to cancer research and to maximize their potential to be leaders in academic medicine.

Evaluation Criteria:

High level potential and interest in cancer research
Interest in eventually establishing own independent cancer research program
Track record of initial productivity in cancer research or other biomedical research with cancer relevance
Strong academic and scholarly record
Strength of recommendation letters.

Eligibility:

Applicants must be MCL/UTL Assistant Professors or Instructors who are within six years of their first independent appointment.
Individuals who already have independent, national competitive research grant funding from the NIH* (e.g., R00, R01, R03, R21), ACS, NSF, or Veterans Administration are not eligible.
Recipients of career development awards (NIH K-series) are eligible.
Recipients of the IRG grant are not required to be U.S. citizens. However, any applicant for IRG pilot project funding who is not a U.S. citizen must hold a visa that will allow him or her to remain in the U.S. long enough to complete the IRG pilot project and provide the Stanford Cancer Institute with the appropriate documentation at the time of submission.

Award Amount:

$50,000 (direct cost) for one year/non-renewable

2026 Awardees

Tracking Immune Dynamics During HER2-Targeted Neoadjuvant Therapy in Breast Cancer
Jennifer Caswell-Jin, MD
Systematic mutational scanning to map collateral lethality networks in cancer
Steven Corsello, MD
Defining spatial molecular residual disease by personalized tumor tissue profiling
Julia Ransohoff, MD

2025 Awardees

Investigating T-regulatory cell depletion as a novel immunotherapy strategy against colorectal cancer.
Chris Chen, MD
Targeting SWI/SNF mediated metabolic reprogramming as a novel treatment strategy for head and neck cancer."
Andrey Finegersh, MD, PhD
Recurrent SRSF2 mutations and aberrant transcript 3' end formation in myeloid neoplasms
Sydney Lu, MD, PhD

2024 Awardees

A new therapy for hepatocellular carcinoma discovered via systematic viability profiling
Steven Corsello, MD, assistant professor of medicine (oncology) was awarded a $50,000 American Cancer Society-Stanford Cancer Institute (ACS-SCI) IRG Pilot Grant for his project entitled “A new therapy for hepatocellular carcinoma discovered via systematic viability profiling.”.
Mitigating CAR T cell immunosuppression in the tumor microenvironment
Zinaida Good, PhD, an instructor at the Stanford Institutes of Medicine, was awarded a $50,000 American Cancer Society-Stanford Cancer Institute (ACS-SCI) IRG Pilot Grant for her project entitled “Mitigating CAR T cell immunosuppression in the tumor microenvironment.”
Building a combination biomarker from Pap samples for ovarian cancer screening in patients at high hereditary risk
Talayeh Ghezelayagh, MD, MPH, an instructor of obstetrics & gynecology – gynecologic oncology, was awarded a $50,000 American Cancer Society-Stanford Cancer Institute (ACS-SCI) IRG Pilot Grant for her project entitled “Building a combination biomarker from Pap samples for ovarian cancer screening in patients at high hereditary risk.”

2022 Awardees

Biomarker Analysis of Neoadjuvant Intralesional Therapy in High-Risk Melanoma
Amanda Kirane, MD, FACS, Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery, Section of Surgical Oncology, was awarded a $45,000 American Cancer Society-Stanford Cancer Institute (ACS-SCI) Institutional Research Grant (IRG) for her project entitled “Biomarker Analysis of Neoadjuvant Intralesional Therapy in High-Risk Melanoma.”
Non-invasive Genotyping and Disease Monitoring of Multiple Myeloma from Cell-free DNA
David Kurtz, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Oncology), was awarded a $45,000 American Cancer Society-Stanford Cancer Institute (ACS-SCI) Institutional Research Grant (IRG) for his project entitled “Non-invasive Genotyping and Disease Monitoring of Multiple Myeloma from Cell-free DNA.”
Stem Cell Graft and Immune Reconstitution Following Novel Investigational and Standard of Care Stem Cell Mobilization in Multiple Myeloma
Surbhi Sidana, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Blood and Marrow Transplantation and Cellular Therapy), was awarded a $45,000 American Cancer Society-Stanford Cancer Institute (ACS-SCI) Institutional Research Grant (IRG) for her project entitled “Stem Cell Graft and Immune Reconstitution Following Novel Investigational and Standard of Care Stem Cell Mobilization in Multiple Myeloma.”
Preclinical Characterization of Donor and Third-Party TCR KO anti-CD19 CAR T cells
Melody Smith, MD, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Blood and Marrow Transplantation and Cellular Therapy), was awarded a $45,000 American Cancer Society-Stanford Cancer Institute (ACS-SCI) Institutional Research Grant (IRG) for her project entitled “Preclinical Characterization of Donor and Third-Party TCR KO anti-CD19 CAR T cells.”

2021 Awardees

Deciphering the Division of Labor Between Activators of the DNA Damage Checkpoint.
Gheorghe Chistol, PhD, Assistant Professor of Chemical and Systems Biology, was awarded a $45,000 American Cancer Society-Stanford Cancer Institute (ACS-SCI) Institutional Research Grant (IRG) for his project entitled “Deciphering the Division of Labor Between Activators of the DNA Damage Checkpoint.”
Immune Targeting of the T-cell Receptor
Michael Khodadoust, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine (Oncology) and of Dermatology, was awarded a $45,000 American Cancer Society-Stanford Cancer Institute (ACS-SCI) Institutional Research Grant (IRG) for his project entitled “Immune Targeting of the T-cell Receptor.”
Intraoperative Molecular Imaging of Lung Cancer Using Panitumumab-IRDye800
Natalie Lui, MD, Assistant Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery (Thoracic Surgery), was awarded a $45,000 American Cancer Society-Stanford Cancer Institute (ACS-SCI) Institutional Research Grant (IRG) for her project entitled “Intraoperative Molecular Imaging of Lung Cancer Using Panitumumab-IRDye800.”

2020 Awardees

Overcoming Intrinsic and Acquired Resistance to In Situ Immunotherapy in Aggressive Cancers
Idit Sagiv-Barfi, PhD, Instructor of Medicine (Oncology), was awarded an American Cancer Society-Stanford Cancer Institute (ACS-SCI) IRG pilot grant for her project entitled “Overcoming Intrinsic and Acquired Resistance to In Situ Immunotherapy in Aggressive Cancers.”
Experimental Characterization and In Vivo Testing of Computationally Designed Self-assembling Superantigens as a Novel Cancer Immunotherapy
Possu Huang, PhD, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering, was awarded an American Cancer Society-Stanford Cancer Institute (ACS-SCI) IRG pilot grant for his project entitled “Experimental Characterization and In Vivo Testing of Computationally Designed Self-assembling Superantigens as a Novel Cancer Immunotherapy.”
Disruption of Immune Surveillance in Isocitrate Dehydrogenase Mutated Acute Myeloid Leukemia.
Tian Yi Zhang, MD, PhD, Instructor of Medicine (Hematology), was awarded an American Cancer Society-Stanford Cancer Institute (ACS-SCI) IRG pilot grant for her project entitled “Disruption of Immune Surveillance in Isocitrate Dehydrogenase Mutated Acute Myeloid Leukemia.”