The Lustgarten Foundation and the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, have announced a five-year, $5 million partnership focused on identifying and validating potential targets for new pancreatic cancer drugs.

Part of the Lustgarten Advancing Breakthrough Science (LABS) Program, the grant will support research efforts led by four principal co-investigators in the Salk Dedicated Program in Pancreatic Cancer. The Lustgarten Foundation, the world’s largest private funder of pancreatic cancer research, also supports LABS collaborations at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Johns Hopkins Medicine.

“We are honored to be the first Lustgarten LAB on the West Coast, which really catalyzes the four participating labs to share common equipment and resources as we bring our individual areas of complementary expertise to bear on the collaborative goal of curing pancreatic cancer,” said Reuben Shaw, lead investigator on the grant and director of Salk’s National Cancer Institute-designated Cancer Center. Shaw’s research explores the role of lipid metabolism, while the other co-investigators study transcriptional and epigenetic targets, kinase drug targets, and vulnerabilities in glycans, which are carbohydrates that coat proteins and cells.

Salk Institute is working to raise $1 million a year over the next five years to match the Lustgarten Foundation grant.

“The foundation’s funding of the Salk Dedicated Program in Pancreatic Cancer is unique because we’re committed to funding preeminent pancreatic cancer scientists focused on a single goal,” said Lustgarten Foundation chief scientist David Tuveson, who also serves as president of the American Association for Cancer Research and director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Cancer Center. “Unlike most funding models, Lustgarten LABS gives scientists at leading research institutions the freedom to build the right team and infrastructure to support the kind of high-risk, high-reward studies required to meet the goal.”

(Photo credit: Salk Institute)