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UT Southwestern researchers describe recent CPRIT grants and emphasis on clinical trials
Summary
UT Southwestern researchers said CPRIT-funded grants this year support projects from lung-cancer resistance studies to glioblastoma research and an imaging core, and emphasized the role of clinical trials for patient treatment options.
UT Southwestern researchers described several recent grants from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas and said the funds support basic science, imaging cores and clinical-trial activation at the Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center.
“UT Southwestern and the Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center … had a great track record of bringing funds from CPRIT to Dallas,” Dr. Tian Zhang of UT Southwestern told In Focus Texas, describing 15 grants awarded to UT Southwestern so far this year, including four awarded in May and 11 awarded in February 2025.
Zhang highlighted a few projects: a grant to Dr. Catherine O’Donnell Mendel to study the cellular surfaceome in treatment-resistant lung cancer; work at Children’s Medical Center on how cholesterol-rich brain environments may affect glioblastoma growth; and a cancer-cell imaging core led by a Lyda Hill Department of Bioinformatics faculty member that supports microscopic imaging of cell interactions and tumor structure.
Zhang said her Zebra Scholar grant helped recruit her to UT Southwestern in 2021 and has supported efforts to bring clinical trials to patients in Dallas and North Texas. “Clinical trials are so important,” she said, noting that every approved cancer therapy began as a clinical trial and that trials can offer additional treatment options when standard therapies fail.
The on-air segment emphasized CPRIT’s recent distribution of about $93 million in a grant cycle and UT Southwestern’s role in using those funds to support basic research, translational projects and trial activation across its catchment area.
(Reporting based on an interview on In Focus Texas.)
