PHILADELPHIA (July 22, 2021)—Charline Ogier, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher at Fox Chase Cancer Center, was recently awarded a fellowship from the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN) to continue her work in advancing pancreatic cancer therapies.
PanCAN is a leading nonprofit in the fight against pancreatic cancer. Recipients of its 2021 research grants and grant extensions were recently announced, including 11 newly awarded grants and two previously funded grants.
Ogier, a postdoctoral fellow at the Marvin and Concetta Greenberg Pancreatic Cancer Institute at Fox Chase, was selected to receive a 2021 PanCAN Fellowship funded by the Francois Wallace Monahan Fund in loving memory of Michael Insel. The grant will fund her work on a collaborative project with Igor Astsaturov, MD, PhD, and Edna Cukierman, PhD, who are co-directors of the institute.
Ogier will receive $150,000 in funding over two years to continue work on suppressing Netrin-1, a critical secreted ligand that promotes metastases. The molecule is currently in clinical trials.
“If this project is a success, which I hope it is, it’s a very good option for other patients who are not candidates for surgery. We have so many ways to fight pancreatic cancer and most of them are failures because it’s so deadly. Being able to help these patients with metastatic cancer is going to be great,” said Ogier.
She added that in addition to providing possible avenues for pancreatic cancer treatment, this grant means a great deal to her personally as a young scientist whose work is now recognized by other scientists in the field.
“At PanCAN, we recognize that research is critical in the fight to improve outcomes for pancreatic cancer patients, and we will continue to invest significant dollars into this arena to support and build the research community,” said Julie Fleshman, JD, MBA, president and CEO of PanCAN. “Thanks to the support of our generous donors, we are proud to be funding so many innovative research projects this year.”
Since 2003, PanCAN’s grants program has awarded 218 grants to 203 scientists at 75 institutions. Beyond research funding, grant recipients also gain access to PanCAN’s Community for Progress, a cohesive network of researchers focused on improving pancreatic cancer patient outcomes through mentorship and collaboration.
According to PanCAN, career development awardees go on to receive an average of $31.23 in subsequent pancreatic cancer research funding for every dollar PanCAN has invested in them. Awardees across all PanCAN grant types go on to receive an average of $11.50 in subsequent funding for each dollar PanCAN has invested. Additionally, PanCAN grant funding during the evaluation period has resulted in more than 2,700 scientific publications and those publications were cited more than 260,000 times.