Dario C. Altieri, president and CEO of The Wistar Institute Cancer Center, and John M. Maris, the Giulio D’Angio Professor of Pediatrics at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine and CHOP, recently received Outstanding Investigator Awards (OIA) from the National Cancer Institute.

This award supports accomplished leaders in cancer research who are providing significant contributions toward understanding cancer and developing applications that may lead to a breakthrough in biomedical, behavioral or clinical cancer research. The OIA provides up to $600,000 in direct costs per year for seven years, allowing substantial time for funded investigators to take greater risks and be more adventurous in their research.

Dr. Maris’ lab seeks to discover the fundamental mechanisms that subvert normal neural development and orchestrate NB tumorigenesis, and then to translate this knowledge into patient-specific therapies that will be more effective and less toxic. 

Dr. Altieri’s studies will dissect the cellular and molecular requirements of tumor plasticity as a novel hallmark of cancer, credential its relevance in xenograft and genetic mouse models of localized and metastatic disease and exploit emerging vulnerabilities of these pathways to aid new drug discovery.