The inaugural recipient of Junior Faculty Award was Gina Sizemore, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology at Ohio State and member of the Cancer Biology Program at the OSUCCC – James.
Over the past four years, Dr. Sizemore has been mentored by 2018 Block Lectureship Awardee Craig Thompson, MD, president and CEO of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Dr. Thompson is a world leader in the study of cancer metabolism and immunity – both integral components of the cancer microenvironment. He and Dr. Sizemore share this research focus.
The tumor microenvironment is composed of the noncancer cells that weave through tumor tissue. Work done by the Thompson and Sizemore labs and other labs over the past couple of decades has shown that this microenvironment plays a direct role in cancer progression.
Since receiving the Junior Lectureship Award, Dr. Sizemore has established a collaborative research program with Dr. Thompson’s team. They identified a novel way that the tumor microenvironment provides nutrients to breast and pancreatic tumor cells that ultimately allows for cancer progression. This work, entitled “Fibroblast Pyruvate Carboxylase is Required for Collagen Production in the Tumor Microenvironment” was published in the journal Nature Metabolism in 2021.
In her roles within the Department of Radiation Oncology and the Cancer Biology Program, Dr. Sizemore also is working on a very important translational research question that allows her to dive deep into mechanisms of how breast cancer cells interact with the brain microenvironment, leading to brain metastasis.
Women who develop brain metastases, as a result of their breast cancer, face a barrage of treatments, and even with aggressive therapy, only half are alive a year later. Dr. Sizemore's team is addressing this clinical failure through highly innovative research that integrates tissue culture and mouse modeling of the brain metastatic tumor microenvironment. Their goal is to identify new effective therapeutic strategies that target not just the cancer cells, but also this surrounding microenvironment.
“When I won the Block Award, I was just beginning my journey as a principal investigator and was incredibly lucky to have had the support of Dr. Thompson during these formative years. Since gaining Dr. Thompson as a mentor, my research has flourished with the receipt of a $1.56 million award from the Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program,” Dr. Sizemore says. “I have also published multiple high-impact publications, including a study in the journal Cancer Research where we report on a putative biomarker and therapeutic strategy for breast cancer-associated brain metastases. My lab is continuing to build on these exciting findings, and we hope to take our research to clinical studies in the near future. I owe so much of my success to the Block family and all those involved with the Block Memorial Lectureship for establishing the Junior Faculty Award and providing me with this amazing opportunity.”