CPRIT Awards Grant to Baylor University Researchers

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In 2007, Texas voters passed proposition 15 to establish the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, and the institute is rolling out its first round of grant awards to principal investigators this spring. James Mansour is CPRIT's Oversight Committee Chairman, and a presenter of yesterday's grant award.

And one of those labs resides in the Baylor University Science Building. The smaller, high impact/high risk grants will help fund promising research, but that's still in early stages. Dr. Kevin Pinney in collaboration with Dr. Mary Lynn Trawick are two Baylor University professors. They received $200,000 CPRIT High Impact/High Risk award to develop new small-molecule anticancer agents - benzosuberenes.

Dr. Pinney:

Over the next two years, the next phase of research is to find out exactly how this chemical works, and if it will work specifically - affecting only cancer cells in living systems.

Dr. Trawick

Although the project is still in its infancy, Dr. Trawick says she hopes her and Dr. Pinney's research will lead to an effective treatment for cancer patients.

Over the next 10 years CPRIT will roll out over $3 billion dollars in bonds to fund ground breaking cancer research and prevention programs in Texas. For KWBU news, I'm Jacqueline Deavenport.