A researcher from the UCLA Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center will receive a two-year $100,000 grant by the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO). The junior faculty career research-training award is only given to one junior faculty physician-scientist a year. The funding gives early career physicians and researchers the opportunity to develop careers and focus on research relevant to radiation oncology, biology or physics.
Dr. Erina Vlashi, assistant professor in the department of radiation oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA will use the award to continue investigating how exposure to ionizing radiation alters the metabolic state of tumor cells that can lead to the development of resistance to radiation therapy treatments. The research will provide insights into how tumor cells use metabolic reprogramming to not only sustain uncontrolled proliferation, but also to reprogram their functional phenotype.
Recipients must be board-eligible physicians, physicists in radiation oncology or radiobiologists within the first three years of their junior faculty appointment.
