Researchers in the NCI-designated Dan L. Duncan Cancer Center at Baylor College of Medicine have received an additional $15.9 million in the new round of grants announced by the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas on Thursday. 

The Duncan Cancer Center has received more than $50 million in CPRIT funding since the institute began awarding cancer grants to Texas researchers in January 2010. 

The new awards include: 

- Award to recruit Dr. Jin Wang, a promising young scientist and currently a post-doctoral associate at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, to BCM. Wang studies nanofabrication and nanoparticles for targeted drug delivery, specifically for cancer therapies. 

- Grant to Dr. David Spencer, professor of immunology, to study dendritic cell therapy for prostate cancer.

- Shared instrumentation award for a state-of-the-art mass spectrometer to study multiple types of cancer for Dr. Jun Qin, associate professor of biochemistry.   

- BCM-led, multi-investigator, multi-institution award for cell therapy research in brain and other nervous system cancers including leukemia, lung and bronchus, melanoma and pancreas. Led by Dr. Malcolm Brenner, director of the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy, the BCM team will include Drs. Adrian Gee and Stephen Gottschalk, both of the Center for Cell and Gene Therapy and Texas Children’s Cancer Center. Researchers from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson and Baylor University Research Institute in Dallas will also collaborate on this project.