Two faculty in Molecular Genetics were among the  2018 recipients of the Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award. This award funds “high risk, high reward” ideas from creative scientists, with the expectation that the funded research will produce sufficient preliminary data to obtain traditional funding.

Dr. Miles will receive a two-year grant to examine how inactivation of the retinoblastoma 1 (RB) tumor-suppressor gene affects cells. The Rb pathway is inactivated in almost all cancers, and Miles is interested in understanding how cells block the production of “cell death proteins” that would kill them after Rb is inactivated.

Dr. Burd, who originally won this award in 2016, received two additional years of funding to follow up her labs progress on her project examining  mutation-specific studies of the RAS oncogene in a variety of tumor types, focusing on melanoma.

Molecular Genetics is proud that the first two OSU faculty to receive this competitive award come from our department!