News Release
October 20, 2008
Contact: Chris DeFrancesco, 860-679-3914
e-mail:
cdefrancesco@uchc.edu
Patrice Bedrosian, 203-379-4840
e-mail:
patrice.bedrosian@cancer.org
Cancer Grant for UConn Health Center Physician-Scientist
American Cancer Society Backing Dr. John Taylor’s Bladder Cancer Research
FARMINGTON, CONN. – University of Connecticut Health Center urologist and researcher John A. Taylor III, M.D., has been awarded a grant from the American Cancer Society to fund his ongoing research on bladder cancer.
Taylor, who also is an assistant professor of surgery at the UConn School of Medicine, is one of the region’s few bladder cancer specialists and has continuously received grant support from prestigious sources. The American Cancer Society grant will promote his research on the role of inflammatory molecules on the development and progression of bladder cancer, with the goal of improving ways to prevent and treat this disease.
“We currently have no markers or means to determine which patients with bladder cancer will have progression, which patients would benefit from early aggressive treatment, or even which patients will respond favorably to treatment,” Taylor says. “Our early data are quite promising and could lead to novel ways to manage this disease if not stop its progression. The grant from the American Cancer Society will allow uninterrupted continuation of this important work.”
The award, officially known as “The American Cancer Society New England Division Mentored Research Scholar Grant in Applied and Clinical Research – Beatrice Cueno,” is for five years in the amount of $729,000.
“With the current serious challenges to cancer research funding, it’s more important than ever that the American Cancer Society continue to support the work of new investigators,” says American Cancer Society Connecticut Vice President of Health Initiatives Sarah Shafir. “Virtually every major development in cancer research in the last half century can point to a Society-funded researcher who played a key role along the way, with most of those investigators getting Society support early in their careers when funding is particularly difficult to get. We are extremely proud to point to 42 Society-funded researchers who have gone on to win the Nobel Prize.”
The American Cancer Society currently funds 27 research projects in Connecticut totaling nearly $10 million.
Taylor has been with the UConn Health Center since 2003 and chairs the cancer committee at the Carole and Ray Neag Comprehensive Cancer Center. In 2005 he was one of 10 specialists in the country to receive a Dennis W. Jahnigen Scholars Award from the American Geriatrics Society. The two-year, $200,000 grant helped fund his work on age-related changes in the bladder. He has also been the recipient of HERA Foundation funds, an American Urological Association Post-Residency Research Award, an American Cancer Society Institutional Research Grant, and a New Investigator Award from the American Geriatrics Society for his work on bladder cancer.
Before joining the UConn Health Center, Taylor was an investigator in the Department of Defense’s Center for Prostate Disease Research while serving at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. He earned his medical degree from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City and completed his residency at Columbia University’s-Presbyterian Hospital.
Photo:
http://today.uchc.edu/images/news/taylor.jpg
Caption: Dr. John A. Taylor III is the recipient of a
$729,000 American Cancer Society grant for his ongoing research on
bladder cancer at the UConn Health Center.
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