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Cancer institute awards grant to UNC, NCCU

The National Cancer Institute recently awarded a $12 million partnership grant to UNC-CH and N.C. Central University.

The grant is one of three types of partnerships established by NCI to reduce cancer health disparities in minorities.

UNC received about $4.9 million while NCCU will be granted $7 million in the next five years. The amount NCCU received from the grant is a record for the institution.

Ellen De Graffenreid, director of communications and marketing at the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center at UNC, said NCI picks a committee to choose the recipients based on merit.

UNC and NCCU jointly applied for the grant. The partnership between the two institutions has grown in the past six years.

Dr. Shelton Earp, director of the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, said the cancer institutes worked on projects together and recruited faculty.

“We tested the waters, tested out the partnership, and found it to be very beneficial to both of us,” Earp said.

Richard Goldberg, professor and researcher at Lineberger, said the two institutions wrote the grant application together.

“It was a collaborative effort,” he said.

Goldberg said the collaboration with NCCU is a great opportunity because this is one of UNC’s first major collaborations with a historically black university.

The grant allows UNC and NCCU to pursue five major projects focused on cancer research, especially in the black community.

“It is building the pipeline for minorities,” Graffenreid said.

The projects will research preventative measures for cancer. One such study seeks to lessen the impact of prostate cancer, a disease found at higher rates in black men.

Earp said minorities often have a higher death rate from cancer than whites.

“The projects are more public health- and basic science-related because Central doesn’t have a med school,” he said.

But there are clinical projects as well.

One of the projects will investigate esophagus cancer with researchers from both institutions involved.

Another study, funded by the grant, is a mailed evaluation to women living in rural areas about self-performed cervical cancer tests.

Ricardo Richardson, director of the Cancer Research Program at NCCU, said the university is primarily a teaching institution as opposed to a research institution.

“NCCU has a lot to offer. We have access to the black population,” Richardson said.

Richardson said the grant will also allow for a better flow of ideas between researchers at the two institutions.

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“I am very happy with that,” said Richardson. “This joint research allows us to do more.”

UNC has a huge investment in cancer research, Golberg said. The Lineberger institution is one of 40 institutes funded by NCI.

“Lineberger is the largest recipient of federal funds on the UNC Campus,” Goldberg said.

Contact the State & National Editor at stntdesk@unc.edu.

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