September 20, 2007
NIH honors Dana-Farber researcher with prestigious New Innovator Award
Levi Garraway, MD, PhD
Levi Garraway, MD, PhD, a physician-scientist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a principal investigator in the Center for Cancer Genome Discovery, has been selected as a 2007 recipient of a NIH Director's New Innovator Award.
Chosen from a pool of more than 2,200 applicants, Garraway and 28 other scientists from across the United States each will receive $1.5 million of research support over five years. The New Innovator Award, which was established this year for new investigators who finished their doctoral degrees during the past 10 years and have not received an NIH regular research, or R01, grant, is part of an NIH Roadmap for Medical Research initiative that tests new approaches to supporting research.
Garraway's research has focused on genomics technologies to identify mutations in cancer cell DNA, and to understand how those mutations might make cancer cells vulnerable to new targeted therapies. He will use the New Innovator Award to help support his investigation of a novel genetic and chemical screening approach to identify changes in malignant melanoma tumor cells that could be targets for new treatments.
"The New Innovator Award completely transforms the possibilities for my research," said Garraway. "Before the award, my lab colleagues and I knew there were ideas that were imminently achievable, but we didn't know if we had the means to achieve them. Now, we can focus more on the design and execution of truly exciting experiments, and less on how much they will cost."
The NIH selected the award recipients through special application and evaluation processes that engaged 262 experts from the scientific community in identifying the most highly competitive individuals in each pool. An advisory committee performed the final review and made recommendations to NIH Director Elias A. Zerhouni, MD, based on the evaluations by the outside experts and programmatic considerations.
"These awards complement our other special efforts to fund innovative research and support new scientists as they launch their research careers," explained Zerhouni. "In addition to supporting outstanding research, these programs represent experiments in new ways of identifying and funding promising but unconventional ideas, especially those from new investigators."
The NIH Roadmap for Medical Research is a series of far-reaching initiatives designed to transform the nation's medical research capabilities and speed the movement of research discoveries from the bench to the bedside. It provides a framework of the priorities the NIH must address in order to optimize its entire research portfolio and lays out a vision for a more efficient and productive system of medical research.
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (www.dana-farber.org) is a principal teaching affiliate of the Harvard Medical School and is among the leading cancer research and care centers in the United States. It is a founding member of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC), designated a comprehensive cancer center by the National Cancer Institute.
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