MedILS and the research team of Professor Igor Stagljar will implement a two-year project funded by the fund Goldman Sachs Gives.
Goldman Sachs Gives is committed to fostering innovative ideas, solving economic and social issues, and enabling progress in underserved communities globally. Through a donor-advised fund, Goldman Sachs’ current and retired senior employees work together to recommend grants to qualifying nonprofit organizations to help them achieve their goals.
The research team of Professor Igor Stagljar plans to study the mutated form of a protein called KRAS, which is the most frequently mutated gene in human cancers. The team will use two novel technologies (called MaMTH-DS and SIMPL) developed in their lab to study the proteins associated KRAS and its mutated disease-causing forms. They will also test for chemical compounds that can affect a mutated form for which there are no therapeutics available in clinics.
The goal of this project is to find proteins that associate with normal as well as oncogenic KRAS proteins that will subsequently serve as new therapeutic targets for the identification and classification of KRAS-driven cancers.