News Release

August 29, 2006
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Contact: Jerry Carey
Phone: (856) 566-6171
careyge@umdnj.edu

UMDNJ Researcher Receives Grant from Leukemia Research Foundation
$100K award in one of largest in Foundation’s history

NEW BRUNSWICK —Dr. Chih-Cheng Tsai, an assistant professor in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, has been named the recipient of a one-year, $100,000 research grant from the Leukemia Research Foundation.

The $100,000 grant is the largest ever offered by the Foundation and is one of seven grants of that amount awarded as part of the Foundation's 2006/2007 funding of blood cancer research at institutions from across the United States.

Dr. Tsai's research, Molecular Mechanisms of PLZF-Mediated Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia, builds on prior research completed in his lab that identified two proteins that are factors involved in the maturation of blood cells. This new research project will examine the mechanisms of chromosomal changes in two fusion proteins that keep blood cells from maturing normally, causing several types of acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL). Clarifying how these changes cause APL could lead to better therapeutic approaches to APL and other forms of leukemia.

"The Leukemia Research Foundation is proud to once again offer significant research dollars to the fight to cure blood cancers," said Michael Thirman, MD, director of Leukemia Biology at the University of Chicago and Chairman of the Leukemia Research Foundation's Medical Advisory Board. "It is especially gratifying to provide resources to young scientists, who must compete for funding at a critical point in their careers and in an environment with fewer grant dollars available from the National institutes of Health."

Dr. Tsai's program was one of dozens of proposals from institutions around the world that were received by the Leukemia Research Foundation. The proposals were organized by specialty then matched to the expertise of a reviewer by the Foundation’s Medical Advisory Board Chairperson, Michael Thirman, MD, director of leukemia biology at University of Chicago. Each proposal was thoroughly evaluated and scored by three Medical Advisory Board members using the same scoring system as used by the National Institutes of Health.

For more information on Dr. Tsai's research or to request an interview, please contact Jerry Carey, UMDNJ News Service, at (856) 566-6171 or at (973) 972-3000.

UMDNJ is the nation's largest free-standing public health sciences university with more than 5,500 students attending the state's three medical schools, its only dental school, a graduate school of biomedical sciences, a school of health related professions, a school of nursing and its only school of public health, on five campuses. Last year, there were more than two million patient visits to UMDNJ facilities and faculty at campuses in Newark, New Brunswick/Piscataway, Scotch Plains, Camden and Stratford. UMDNJ operates University Hospital, a Level I Trauma Center in Newark, and University Behavioral HealthCare, a mental health and addiction services network.