MD Anderson Cancer Center announces 2018 Sabin Family Fellows

MD Anderson Cancer Center Board of Visitors member Andrew Sabin met with eight young researchers in June to personally congratulate them on their appointment to the Andrew Sabin Family Fellowship Program.

Thanks to a $30 million endowment made possible by the Andrew Sabin Family Foundation, each of the 2018 fellows will receive $100,000 in funding over two years. Since the program’s 2016 debut, 24 researchers have received fellowships aimed at encouraging innovative and impactful cancer research.

“These brilliant minds represent the future and embody our dream of a world free of this terrible disease,” says Sabin, of East Hampton, New York. “My family and I are honored to play a role in advancing MD Anderson’s mission to end cancer.”

“By generously funding up to eight fellowships each year, the Andrew Sabin Family Foundation nurtures some of the best and brightest young researchers in our collective fight against cancer,” says Peter WT Pisters, M.D., president of MD Anderson. “We’re grateful for this ongoing support and the foundation’s role in advancing potentially lifesaving and practice-changing research.”

A member of the MD Anderson Cancer Center Board of Visitors since 2005, Sabin advocates on a national level for increased cancer research funding. An avid environmentalist, conservationist and wildlife enthusiast, he is president of Sabin Metal Corporation, the largest privately owned precious metals refiner and recycler in the nation.

The 2018 awardees and their areas of interest are:

Jianjun Gao, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor, Genitourinary Medical Oncology: study of combination therapy with immune checkpoint blockade and chemotherapy for MTAP-deficient metastatic bladder cancer

Nitin Jain, M.D., assistant professor, Leukemia: a nonchemotherapy approach to treating chronic lymphocytic leukemia

Filip Janku, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor, Investigational Cancer Therapeutics: studying mechanisms of resistance to treat gastrointestinal stromal tumors more effectively

Pawel Mazur, Ph.D., assistant professor, Experimental Radiation Oncology: a quantitative multiplexed platform for molecular dissection of pancreatic cancer progression and drug resistance

Florian Muller, Ph.D., assistant professor, Cancer Systems Imaging: validating the hypothesis that activating T cells helps destroy certain brain tumors treated with inhibitors of the glycolytic enzyme enolase

Jing Ning, Ph.D., associate professor, Biostatistics: statistical methods to improve risk assessment and dynamic prediction using multiple and longitudinal biomarkers

Liuqing Yang, Ph.D., assistant professor, Molecular and Cellular Oncology: bringing long non-coding RNA targeted therapy to the forefront of triple negative breast cancer treatment

Jianjun Zhang, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor, Thoracic/Head and Neck Medical Oncology: molecular and immune evolution of pre-neoplastic lung lesions