Patrick Moore, MD, MPH, has received the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Outstanding Investigator Award, and was awarded $6.4 million to further his work into the link between viruses and cancer. This NCI grant provides 7 years of secured support, giving the investigator freedom from the pressure of ongoing grant competitions.
Dr. Moore is a Distinguished Professor and Leader of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) Cancer Virology Program, holding The Pittsburgh Foundation Chair in Innovative Cancer Research at Pitt. Together with his research partner and wife, Yuan Chang, MD, Dr. Moore identified two different viruses that cause Kaposi sarcoma and Merkel cell carcinoma.
The award will fund Dr. Moore’s research in three key areas:
- Understanding the mechanism by which the virus that causes Merkel cell carcinoma turns normal cells into cancer,
- Investigating unusual ways that the virus causing Kaposi sarcoma makes oncoproteins, and
- Identifying new ways to find viruses that cause cancer in humans.
Recently, the Moore-Chang laboratory found a new mechanism that cancer viruses use to regulate how cells translate RNA into proteins and developed an assay to discover a class of viruses called polyomaviruses.
“I am hopeful this research will help provide new insights into methods to reliably determine the role of viruses in human cancers and to uncover new common cancer pathways that are at work in both infectious and noninfectious tumors,”
Dr. Moore said. ■
