WILMINGTON, Del.,- A research team at the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center at Christiana Care Health System and the Center for Translational Cancer Research performs a key role in a prestigious National Institutes of Health research project grant of $2.5 million to continue groundbreaking work into the creation of artificial salivary glands.
Robert Witt, M.D., chief of the Multidisciplinary Head and Neck Oncology Clinic at the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center, is the clinician/scientist principal investigator (PI) in the four-year initiative. Other PIs named in the grant are Cindy Farach-Carson, Ph.D., a biologist at Rice University in Houston, and Xinqiao Jia, Ph.D., a materials engineer at the University of Delaware. Grant funding comes from NIH's National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research.
"The purpose of our project is to relieve the debilitating lack of saliva in a patient who has undergone radiation treatments for throat cancer," Dr. Witt says. "These patients have lost the ability to swallow properly and enjoy food and liquids. They suffer from a lack of taste and are prone to many dental problems."
Research project grants, known as R01, are highly competitive. NIH awards them to specified projects that a named investigator or investigators perform.
"Dr. Witt's hard work over the last several years has paid off with this NIH RO1 grant, which are extremely difficult grants to get funded," says Nicholas J. Petrelli, M.D., Bank of America Endowed medical director at the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center at Christiana Care. "This is a great achievement for Dr. Witt, his team, Christiana Care and ultimately cancer patients who will benefit from this research."
PR Newswire