The American Cancer Society gave a UNM researcher $360,000 in hopes of bringing fresh blood to the fight against cancer.
The society awarded $360,000 in research funds to Michelle Ozbun, UNM cancer biologist and virologist, over the next three years. The funds will go toward budding researchers at the University, with the one stipulation that research be done on cancer.
John Weisgerber, a spokesman for the ACS, said it received about 2,000 grant applications. After review, 94 received grant money.
“The neat thing about the institutional research grant which (Ozbun) is going to oversee is that it provides seed money to new cancer researchers,” he said. “We try to fund some of the best and brightest in the country and help get their research careers off the ground.”
Weisgerber said the ACS gave grants to 44 people who won Nobel Prizes.
Ozbun, who has a doctorate in molecular virology, previously did research on the human papilloma virus and cervical cancer. She said the grant money will go toward researchers in need of experience.
“The grant is to give to junior faculty … who are working on a cancer-related project and who have not obtained national funding,” Ozbun said. “These little grants are to help people get more preliminary data so they can compete better for the really large national grants.”
Ozbun said the grant money will fund about four $30,000 research projects per year. Applicants generally come from different academic departments.
“We have a lot of really cool things going on between the college of engineering and the School of Medicine and the department of physics,” Ozbun said. “It’s pretty cross-disciplinary.”
UNM has received the Institutional Research Grant from the ACS continuously since 1992. This latest grant will take effect on Jan. 1 and continue through 2013.
“It helps in the success of new faculty members,” Ozbun said. “We have a lot of really innovative young investigators, and that’s really what the ACS likes to do. It likes to fund people before they get their big break.”
