Alicia Zhou, Chief Executive Officer of the Cancer Research Institute, shared on LinkedIn:
“This has been a banner year for cancer vaccine research.
Merck and Moderna recently announced positive Phase 3 results for their individualized mRNA vaccine in preventing melanoma recurrence. And in April, Dr. Vinod Balachandran shared encouraging long-term results from a Phase 1 pancreatic cancer vaccine trial: nearly 90% of the patients who mounted an immune response were still alive up to six years after treatment.
These studies reflect a shift I am very excited to see across oncology: moving immunotherapy earlier in the disease course.
Cancer does not begin on the day it is diagnosed, and recurrence does not begin when a new tumor becomes visible. Biological changes can develop years earlier, creating a window in which we may be able to intervene.
That is the promise of cancer prevention and interception: using the immune system not only to treat cancer, but to stop it from developing or returning.
The results are incredibly exciting. But there is still so much we need to understand – particularly why some patients respond, and others do not. We need better biomarkers and models, the right immune targets, and better understanding of the underlying biology. Most importantly, we need to connect what we are learning in the lab with approaches that can ultimately reach patients in a reliable and repeatable way.
No one laboratory or discipline can solve these challenges alone.
That is why, for the first time, the Cancer Research Institute (CRI) is dedicating our 2027 CLIP grant cycle to primary and secondary cancer prevention and interception.
We are offering grants of up to $1 million over three years to multi-investigator teams pursuing innovative, immune-based approaches to preventing cancer development and recurrence.
CRI has spent more than 70 years investing in where cancer immunology can go next. Today, one of the field’s most important frontiers may be stopping more cancers before they have the opportunity to take hold again – or at all.
Letters of intent are due December 1, 2026.”
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