Local doctor awarded $230K to continue groundbreaking leukemia research

Local doctor awarded $230K to continue groundbreaking leukemia research


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SALT LAKE CITY — The Huntsman Cancer Institute's Dr. Michael Engel was awarded a $230,000 grant from the St. Baldrick's Foundation, a charity that raises money for childhood cancer research.

Engel received the extended Scholar award because of his work on acute myeloid leukemia (AML). About 1,000 children are diagnosed with AML in the United States each year and only approximately 50 percent survive. Engel has been researching how normal blood cell development is changed in AML patients.

"We have discovered a critical connection between a gene called Notch that causes leukemia and one of its partners, GFI1, that helps to determine if a leukemia cell lives or dies," Engel said in a press release. "The funding from the St. Baldrick's Foundation will allow us to determine how Notch supports the functions of GFI1 to allow leukemia cells to survive. Once we know this, we can work to develop a new drug to treat leukemia and understand how it works. By understanding how the drug works, we may be able to use it to treat other cancers, too."


These grants are one step toward filling the critical gap that exists between the research dollars spent per child with cancer and those spent per adult.

–Kathleen Ruddy, CEO of the St. Baldrick's Foundation


The grant is part of a $22 million effort by the Foundation to help cancer researchers around the world during their 2013 summer grant cycle. They plan on awarding 63 total grants this summer in 17 different countries with the $22 million.

"These grants are one step toward filling the critical gap that exists between the research dollars spent per child with cancer and those spent per adult," says Kathleen Ruddy, chief executive officer of the St. Baldrick's Foundation. "When one considers the total landscape of available funding from government, industry and philanthropy, it is apparent children are being left behind. Great progress has been made in treatments for many types of cancers that plague adults, but the same level of progress has been made in only a few forms of cancer in children. That needs to change."

For more information on the St. Baldrick's Foundation, visit their website at www.stbaldricks.org.

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