UMass Medical professor gets $791K for cancer research

Courtesy Wen Xue, PhD, assistant professor of molecular medicine and a member of the RNA Therapeutics Institute at UMass Medical School, will use the $791,000 in funds to study KRAS inhibition in lung cancer.

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By Sam Bonacci

The American Cancer Society has distributed nearly $800,000 in research funds to a Worcester medical school researcher that focuses on lung cancer.

Wen Xue, PhD, assistant professor of molecular medicine and a member of the RNA Therapeutics Institute at UMass Medical School, will use the $791,000 in funds to study KRAS inhibition in lung cancer, according to the American Cancer Society.

“Because of the enormous amount of respect we have for the institution, we’ve had a long history of investing in investigators at UMass, and we see promise in Dr. Xue, and remain confident and hopeful that his work gets us s step closer to a breakthrough,” Peg Camp, executive vice president of the American Cancer Society’s New England Division, said in a release.

The award was one of 10 grants given out to Massachusetts researchers by the Framingham organization, which is the largest non-government, not-for-profit funding source of cancer research in the United States.

The 10 grants distributed by the organization totaled $3.8 million and bring the society’s current research investment in the state to more than $30 million.

The grants are among 103 national research and training grants totaling nearly $44 million in the first of two grant cycles for 2016. The grants will fund investigators at 74 institutions across the United States.