Dr. Carol Lim Awarded Two Grants For Her Cancer Research Proposals
Dr. Carol Lim has been awarded two substantial grants to help forward her research proposals. The grants together total $1,400,875 and will cover 7 years of research.
The first grant is the National Institutes of Health/National Cancer Institute (NIH/NCI) R01 grant. The direct costs over 5 years is $1,143,750. Awarded for the proposal titled "A Leukemia Cell-Specific Coiled-Coil Protein for Treatment of Chronic Myeloid Leukemia." This proposal is in collaboration with Thomas Cheatham (Medicinal Chemistry), Michael Kay (Biochemistry), Michael Deininger (HCI), and Thomas O'Hare (HCI).
The long-term goal of this proposal is to develop a protein inhibitor against Bcr-Abl, the causative agent of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and 30% of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), that circumvents current problems with Bcr-Abl targeted therapy. Computationally designed coiled coil proteins will be synthesized, and will be tested for ability to inhibit dimerization of Bcr-Abl. These peptides are designed to specifically enter leukemia cells, be resistant to degradation, be stable in the bloodstream, and show efficacy in blocking the activity of Bcr-Abl, thus providing a new type of therapy for these leukemias.
The second grant is the NIH/NCI R21 grant. The direct costs over 2 years is $257,125. Awarded for the proposal titled "Re-engineered Mitochondrially Targeted p53 Gene Therapy in Liver Cancer." This proposal is in collaboration with Kimberley Evason (HCI) and was spearheaded by Dr. Lim's former grad student Katherine Redd Bowman, who is now her post-doc.
This proposal will design, develop, and test a mitochondrially targeted p53-BH3 protein hybrid for gene therapy of hepatocellular carcinoma in preclinical zebrafish and mouse models for liver cancer. This is a novel p53-hybrid gene therapy that combines the tumor suppressor activity of p53 with the apoptotic ability of the BH3-only protein Bad, and is designed to improve on past p53 gene therapies for liver cancer.
Congratulations Dr. Lim!
