The AACR-Exelixis Renal Cell Carcinoma Research Fellowship represents a joint effort to encourage and support postdoctoral or clinical research fellows to conduct renal cell carcinoma research and to establish a successful career path. 

2024 Grantee

Research

Translocation renal cell carcinoma (tRCC) is a rare, aggressive renal cancer with higher incidence in children, young patients, women, and as a secondary malignancy. Dr. Weiss seeks to leverage PROteolysis-TArgeting-Chimeras (PROTACs) to rapidly and completely degrade MiT/TFE-fusion proteins which drive tRCC, in in vitro and in vivo models, to understand how the fusions exert their oncogenic function and to discover novel therapeutic targets in tRCC. He plans to utilize unbiased genome-scale screening techniques to identify therapeutic targets among genes that can functionally substitute for MiT/TFE-fusions, and endogenous regulators and small molecule degraders of MiT/TFE-fusions that can phenocopy fusion-protein loss.

Biography

Dr. Weiss is a pediatric hematology/oncology fellow at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center. He earned his medical and doctoral degrees (MD/PhD) from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, with research focused on hematopoietic differentiation, and epigenetic mechanisms underlying chromatin compaction. He completed his residency in the Boston Combined Residency Program in Pediatrics, Accelerated Research Pathway. Dr. Weiss is currently researching the molecular pathogenesis of tRCC and other MiT/TFE-fusion driven cancers. His research and clinical interests are in pediatric renal tumors and rare cancers that affect adolescent and young adult patients.

Acknowledgment of Support

“I am thrilled to be awarded the AACR-Exelixis Renal Cell Carcinoma Research Fellowship, which provides essential funding to advance my research on translocation renal cell carcinoma and supports my development as an independent physician-scientist. This opportunity significantly contributes to my goal of improving outcomes for pediatric and adolescent/young adult cancer patients.”

2022 Grantee

Research  

Accounting for 85% of renal cancers, clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is a lethal disease. JMJD6 has been identified to play critical roles in ccRCC tumorigenesis.  JMJD6 interacts with RBM39 and co-occupies the DGAT1 gene promoter, consequently inducing DGAT1 expression. Depletion of JMJD6 or DGAT1 has been found to inhibit ccRCC tumorigenesis. However, the efficacy of DGAT1 inhibitor has been limited to preclinical ccRCC models. RBM39 is an emerging cancer target; its protein degrader indisulam has good inhibitory effects on multiple cancers. However, the role of RBM39 in ccRCC tumorigenesis is unknown. Dr. Zhou aims to clarify the mechanism of RBM39-mediated regulation of DGAT1 expression, and to explore whether RBM39 degrader indisulam alone or in combination with a DGAT1 inhibitor can be effective against kidney cancer. 

Biography    

Dr. Zhou completed her doctoral degree at the School of Basic Medical Sciences in Wuhan University, China, where she studied the relationship between intrauterine growth retardation and prenatal xenobiotics exposure. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the department of Pathology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, TX. She is focused on parsing critical genes causing tumorigenesis and cancer metastasis in kidney cancer and exploring new therapeutic strategies.

Acknowledgment of Support 

It is a great honor to be awarded with this AACR fellowship. As a postdoctoral fellow, I think this experience will lay a good foundation for my independent research in the future, and I will cherish this opportunity, to try my best to achieve my research goal.