The National Science Foundation has announced grants totaling $11.75 million in support of a public-private partnership that aims to transform cancer research and treatments.

The grants — $5 million from NSF, $2.75 million from the National Cancer Institute, and a total of $4 million from Stand Up to Cancer and the V Foundation for Cancer Research — will fund an NSF Ideas Lab to generate projects that employ a physics-based approach to cancer research and treatment. NSF Ideas Labs typically convene fifteen to thirty participants from different areas to develop proposals over the course of an intensive five-day workshop process. At the conclusion of the process, select teams will be invited to submit their proposals for funding. Through the exercise, NSF hopes to integrate novel approaches from physics and mathematics to aid the understanding of cancer as a complex dynamic disease.

"For many years, researchers have recognized that theoretical physics brings an important perspective to the table in studying biological issues," said Denise Caldwell, director of NSF's physics division. "Using an interdisciplinary approach to living systems, researchers can make quantitative predictions of a system's behavior that biological approaches cannot do alone."