Harvard Medical School Associate Professor of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery Ravindra Uppaluri, MD, PhD, who is also Chief of the Division of Otolaryngology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), received a $4.3 million U01 Cancer Moonshot grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) for his project, “Defining mechanisms of immunotherapy resistance in head and neck squamous cell carcinomas.”
An initiative of the NCI, the Cancer Moonshot program seeks to accelerate cancer research and aims to make more therapies available to more patients, while also improving our ability to prevent cancer and detect it at an early stage.
Dr. Uppaluri will serve as the Principal Investigator of this project with Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s David Barbie, MD, and Robert Haddad, MD. The team seeks to understand why many patients with head and neck cancers display resistance to immunotherapy drugs with the goal of improving treatment response rates for this patient population.
More broadly in his work at BWH, Dr. Uppaluri works in a close fashion with colleagues in medical and radiation oncology and neurosurgery. His clinical interests focus on head and neck malignancies, including using minimally invasive transoral and endoscopic approaches. His research interests focus on basic and translational approaches to improving outcomes for patients with head and neck cancers.
The NCI is the federal government's principal agency for cancer research and training. The mission of the NIDCR is to improve dental, oral, and craniofacial health.
Adapted from a news release from Brigham and Women's Hospital.