In announcing the awards, Dr. Levine invoked the memory of Laura Ziskin, the movie producer and one of the co-founders of SU2C and who lived with breast cancer for seven years before her death.

"This year's Sharp Awards for Innovation in Collaboration are distinguished in several respects," he said. "One, is that the awards represent novel collaborations between senior and junior researchers, which create synergistic mentoring opportunities. Second, the winning proposals arise directly from questions being explored by existing Teams, arising through the 2016 SU2C Scientific Summit. These five projects will be funded in a short timeframe uncharacteristic of most funding mechanisms, and questions will be under investigation quickly."


"Third, is the issue of geography: the winners come from research institutions across the US, yet their research will be collaborative. And finally, we see a trend among early-career scientists who started out as physicists and mathematicians but have moved into biology and are joining multi-disciplinary teams," he said, "I think it's fair to say that the full integration of computational design is where cancer research is going."

Following the Summit, each selected team submitted a more detailed, yet still streamlined, two-page proposal and budget to SU2C's Scientific Advisory Committee.

Sharing the $1 million in Sharp Award funding in equal allocations of $200,000 to support research over a one- to two-year period are teams of senior scientists and early career researchers (denoted with *):

"Fingerprinting the systemic microbiome in plasma to predict immunotherapy outcomes in melanoma"
Muhammed Murtaza, MBBS, PhD*, SU2C-Melanoma Research Alliance Melanoma Dream Team
and
Antoni Ribas, MD, SU2C-Cancer Research Institute Cancer Immunology Dream Team

"Defining the role of epigenetics in chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy for CLL"
Shelley Berger, PhD, Van Andel Research Institute – SU2C Epigenetics Dream Team reviewer
Carl June, MD, SU2C Joint Scientific Advisory Committee
and
Junwei Shi, PhD*

"Towards Predictive Models of Immunotherapy Response"
Benjamin Greenbaum, PhD*, Pancreatic Cancer Convergence Team
and
Jedd Wolchok, MD, PhD, SU2C-American Cancer Society Lung Cancer Dream Team

"Checkpoint inhibition in children with ultra-mutated cancer due to biallelic mismatch repair deficiency (bMMRD)"
Crystal Mackall, MD, SU2C-St. Baldrick's Pediatric Cancer Dream Team
and
Patrick Forde, MD*, SU2C-Cancer Research Institute Cancer Immunology Dream Team

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