Congratulations to Rahul S. Bhansali, MD, on receiving a 2024 Physician-Scientist Training Award from the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation! Dr. Bhansali, a postdoc in the Blobel Lab, is one of four scientists with exceptional promise and novel approaches to fighting cancer to receive this year’s award.

This award, established to help bolster the ranks of this vital cohort of cancer researchers, provides physicians who have completed clinical specialty fellowship training with the opportunity to become leaders in translational and clinical research. The awardees are selected through a highly competitive and rigorous process by a committee of leading cancer researchers who are themselves physician-scientists.

Physician-scientists are uniquely positioned to conduct research that has the potential to be translated into therapies that improve and prolong the lives of their patients. However, the pipeline of physician-scientists is dwindling. Damon Runyon seeks to address the financial disincentives that often deter physicians from pursuing a research career by providing considerably higher funding than most research fellowships—$100,000 in the first year, with increases of $10,000 per year over the next three years ($460,000 total over four years). It will also retire up to $100,000 of any medical school debt still owed by an award recipient. (The average medical school debt now exceeds $200,000.)

Since its launch in 2015, the program has funded 42 new physician-scientists from across a range of disciplines. Their research has not only brought forth insights into how cancer develops and spreads but also led to the development of new therapies, including several in clinical trials.

Rahul S. Bhansali, MD, with mentor Gerd A. Blobel, MD, PhD, at University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

Dr. Bhansali is studying how epigenetic processes—specifically the three-dimensional folding of DNA—promote the development, growth, and survival of cancers. His research focuses on T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL), an aggressive blood cancer affecting both children and adults for which traditional chemotherapy remains the mainstay of treatment. LDB1 is a protein involved in the process of DNA folding that partners with another protein called LMO2, which is highly expressed in up to 75% of T-ALL. Dr. Bhansali hypothesizes that LDB1/LMO2 rewire the normal gene expression machinery in our blood cells in a way that activates cancer-promoting genes to cause leukemia. Targeting this process may shed light on new treatment avenues and ways to overcome resistance to treatment.

Read more about the award and other recipients on the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation website.