Dec. 19 Preclinical Quick Takes: First recipients of AACR- MPM Capital impact fund grants revealed; plus pre-conception protection with NIH’s Zika vaccine, Vivet

AACR, MPM announce first two grant recipients from cancer foundation
The American Association for Cancer Research and MPM Capital’s UBS Oncology Impact Fund have awarded the first two grants -- $400,000 each over two years -- from their AACR-MPM Oncology Charitable Foundation to Sahand Hormoz, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Liron Bar-Peled, an assistant professor at Harvard and an investigator at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center. Hormoz's lab at Dana-Farber is studying how genetic alterations in hematopoietic stem cells can cause myeloproliferative neoplasms. Bar-Peled’s lab at Massachusetts General is investigating how to manipulate metabolic reprogramming in cancer cells to induce ferroptosis.

Zika protection with NIH DNA vaccine given before conception
A Science Translational Medicine study published Wednesday showed that maternal immunization with VRC5283 prior to conception improved fetal outcomes in macaques that were exposed repeatedly to Zika virus during gestation. NIH’s DNA vaccine against Zika led to significant reductions in maternal viremia, early fetal loss and fetal pathology. VRC5283 is in Phase II/IIb testing...