Almost $9M in grants has been received by Biodesign Institute for the development of a preventive vaccine against cancer.

Stephen Albert Johnston, PhD, director of the institute's Center for Innovations in Medicine, will focus his research project on breast cancer.

Johnston is one of only two recipients in the nation bestowed with a five-year, $7.5 million grant from the Department of Defense's Innovator Award, funded through its Breast Cancer Research Program. His Biodesign research colleague, Douglas Lake, PhD, will lead a three-year $1.2 million project from the W. M. Keck Foundation to take the basic technology and see whether it could be applied to several other forms of cancer.

The grants mark the first major federal and private awards for such an approach and ramp up a cancer research collaborative initiative with the Mayo Clinic.

Find more details from the full report.

[In Photo: Yvette Ruiz and Douglas Lake discuss their latest efforts to uncover cancer protein signatures as part of a Biodesign Institute and Mayo Clinic cancer vaccine project. The project has received nearly $9 million in funds from a Department of Defense 'Innovator Award' and the W.M. Keck Foundation.]