NIH awards $2.53M; St. Jude to feature at AACR
Congressman Steve Cohen announced four NIH grants totaling $2,525,665 awarded to the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. St. Jude said its work will be highlighted at the AACR annual meeting, where the center’s director will also be honored. (cohen.house.gov) (prnewswire.com)
Four National Institutes of Health grants worth $2,525,665 are headed to Memphis research centers, with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital also set for a high-profile week at a national cancer meeting. (cohen.house.gov) (stjude.org) Congressman Steve Cohen announced the awards on April 14, 2026. The money is split between St. Jude and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, with two grants for each institution. (cohen.house.gov) St. Jude’s grants are $665,701 from the National Cancer Institute for Dr. Asya Agulnik’s work on Pediatric Early Warning Systems in childhood cancer care, and $614,231 from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases for Dr. Jian Xu’s leukemia research. (cohen.house.gov) The University of Tennessee Health Science Center’s grants are $642,758 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse for Dr. Hao Chen’s nicotine-use research and $602,975 from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases for Dr. Zhongjie Sun’s work on kidney function, blood pressure, and aging. (cohen.house.gov) The St. Jude projects span two very different problems: how hospitals spot children with cancer who are getting sicker, and how leukemia cells use mobile pieces of DNA called retrotransposons to keep growing. Cohen’s office said Agulnik’s grant examines how clinic capacity and access to surgeries or medicines affect early-warning systems, while Xu’s grant focuses on L1 elements linked to acute myeloid leukemia cells. (cohen.house.gov) The Tennessee grants arrive days before the American Association for Cancer Research opens its 2026 annual meeting in San Diego on April 17. The meeting runs through April 22 at the San Diego Convention Center. (aacr.org) (stjude.org) At that meeting, St. Jude said Charles W.M. Roberts, the hospital’s executive vice president and Comprehensive Cancer Center director, will be recognized as a 2026 Fellow of the American Association for Cancer Research Academy and will receive the Daniel D. Von Hoff Award for Outstanding Contributions to Education and Training in Cancer Research. (stjude.org) (eurekalert.org) St. Jude said Roberts will give an award lecture, chair an April 21 session on chromatin, epigenetics and cancer, and appear in a STAT-hosted fireside chat titled “Shifting the Paradigm for Pediatric Cancer.” The hospital also said its faculty will take part in multiple sessions and panel discussions during the conference. (stjude.org) Together, the grants and the conference spotlight put Memphis institutions in two lanes of biomedical research at once: federal funding for new lab and clinical projects, and national visibility for pediatric cancer work already moving through the research pipeline. (cohen.house.gov) (stjude.org)
