Texas Southern University recently announced the receipt of a $5.1 million cancer research grant awarded by the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT). It is one of the largest research grants in the school’s history and part of a $2 billion statewide effort to bolster product and treatment innovations for the disease.
The five-year award is the first grant TSU has earned through the publicly-funded cancer research initiative, and will support the university securing new technology and preclinical trial support for research and development in the TSU College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences.
“This award is affirmation of our commitment to bring world-class academic quality and research opportunities to Texas Southern University,” said Dr. Austin A. Lane, President of TSU. “Students and faculty in our College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences will have access to leading-edge cancer research through this grant. As the largest Historically Black College and University in Texas and the second-largest in the nation, this will significantly strengthen our mission to provide advanced academic and research programs to ethnically diverse student populations, and to positively impact minority health research in the Texas Medical Center and beyond.”
The funding will also support TSU as an on-campus incubator for academic research and regional pharmaceutical startups.
We are very excited about this award and what it means for TSU,” said Dr. Dong Liang, chair and professor of the department of pharmaceutical and environmental health sciences at TSU and principal investigator of the grant. “While there is no shortage of brilliant cancer investigators throughout the Texas Medical Center, and exciting cancer discoveries on a regular basis, academic resources for developing those discoveries into actual cancer treatments has been largely unavailable except through contract research organizations, which are often inaccessible to many cancer researchers. With CPRIT funding, we will be able to expand our current program to create the GCC Center for Comprehensive Pharmacokinetics and Pharmacodynamics (PK/PD) and Formulation (CCPF)project. This will allow us to accommodate many additional studies and ultimately move more Texas cancer investigators’ discoveries closer to clinical trials.”
