Summer 2026
By Jane Anderson
As a longstanding supporter of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and one of the nation’s top funders of early career scientists, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation invests in the world’s brightest young minds, supporting their freedom to pursue the most promising avenues of research. Rather than safer and more incremental progress, the foundation prioritizes the possibility of massive breakthroughs.
In support of this mission, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation awarded grants, totaling more than $3 million, to Dana-Farber investigators working across cancer types. This range of awards highlights both Dana-Farber’s excellence in cancer research and the foundation’s deep commitment to making targeted grants that will have the greatest impact on the broader field of cancer research.
Megan Insco, MD, PhD, Erin Parry, MD, PhD, Srivatsan Raghavan, MD, PhD, and Lachelle Weeks, MD, PhD, received the Damon Runyon Clinical Investigator Award, which supports independent young physician-scientists conducting disease-oriented research that demonstrates a high level of innovation and creativity. Xin Zhou, PhD, received the Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award, which provides support for the next generation of exceptionally creative thinkers with “high-risk/high-reward” ideas that have the potential to significantly impact our understanding of and/or approaches to the prevention, diagnosis, or treatment of cancer.
Keene Abbott, PhD, Amy Li, MD, PhD, Geoffrey Smith, MD, PhD, and Cary Weiss, MD, PhD, received the Damon Runyon-St. Jude Pediatric Cancer Research Fellowship Award, which provides funding to early career scientists advancing research to prevent, diagnose, or treat pediatric cancers.
Simone Bruno, PhD, received the Damon Runyon Quantitative Biology Fellowship Award, which encourages quantitative scientists (trained in fields such as mathematics, computer science, physics, engineering, and others) to pursue research careers in computational biology under the joint mentorship of leaders in both computational science (“dry lab”) and cancer biology (“wet lab”).
Given the uncertainty of the current scientific climate, it is more important than ever to provide stability and protected research time to keep promising young researchers in science.
Yung S. Lie, PhD, President and CEO of Damon Runyon
Under the mentorship of Xin Gu, PhD, recent Harvard College graduate Milen Negasi received funding from the Damon Runyon Scholars Program for Advancing Research and Knowledge (SPARK) to build on her undergraduate research experience. Through SPARK, the foundation helps to ensure that talented college seniors and recent graduates are encouraged to pursue rigorous scientific education and can commit their talents to tackling longstanding challenges in biomedical research.
“Given the uncertainty of the current scientific climate, it is more important than ever to provide stability and protected research time to keep promising young researchers in science,” said Yung S. Lie, PhD, President and CEO of Damon Runyon. “We’re very pleased to be able to offer exactly that to these talented Dana-Farber scientists.”