Nevus Outreach is pleased to announce the awarding of 3 research grants for the 2018 grant cycle. The Research Committee, chaired by Paul Coleman, had a difficult task in choosing which projects to recommend for funding. "We received 7 high quality requests including 2 international requests," said Coleman. "Nevus Outreach announced earlier this year that we would award two $10,000 grants, thanks in part to a large donation from the Ashurst Foundation. Because of a very successful fundraiser by one of our constituents, Jenna vanDerzee, as well as some other donations for research from Nevus Outreach supporters, not only were we able to recommend to the board these two $10,000 grants, we were also able to suggest partially funding another project."
The board voted to fund these three recommended projects at their November meeting. "We're also very excited that we already have some funds set aside for the 2019 grant cycle, thanks to the Ashurst Foundation and the vanDerzee fundraiser," said Coleman. "These larger donations, along with people who regularly give to research, allow us to fulfill our mission of finding cures for CMN and related disorders."
The 2018 awards are as follows:
$10,000 to Dipanjan Basu, Ph.D. and his team at the Rangos Research Center, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, Department of Pathology, University of Pittsburgh for their project Testing HDAC inhibitors in vitro as potential drug candidates for L/GCMN.
$10,000 to Yasmin Khakoo, M.D. and her team at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Department of Pediatrics for their project to develop and manage an NCM registry beginning at Memorial Sloan Kettering and over time incorporating clinics across North America.
$2,500 to Deepti Gupta, M.D. and her team at the Pediatric Dermatology Research Alliance (PeDRA), Pigmented Lesions Group for their project to produce evidence-based expert consensus recommendations for care of children with congenital melanocytic nevi (CMN) in the newborn period.