PICI Grants

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The Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy (PICI) at MSK issues requests for applications for two internal competition funding mechanisms:

Pilot Grants: The PICI Pilot Grant mechanism is intended to provide seed money to MSK faculty members to facilitate experiments that will establish preliminary data to develop novel hypotheses. This mechanism allows for rapid funding of novel ideas in any area of cancer immunotherapy.

Career Development Awards: The PICI Career Development Awards are to encourage and support young investigators (Instructors and Assistant Members) with innovative ideas in cancer immunotherapy.

2020 Awardees

February 2020 Career Development Awards

Yael David
Studying the epigenetic effect of metabolic stress on CAR T therapy in multiple myeloma

Alan Hanash
Mining the marrow for anti-tumor immunity after hematopoietic transplantation

Justin Perry
Understanding and overcoming hypoxic conditioning of phagocytosis in the tumor microenvironment

2019 Awardees

July 2019 Pilot Grants

Emily Cheng
Targeting the BCL-2 Family to Improve Immunotherapy

Sergio Giralt and Arnab Ghosh
Identifying the effects of ipilimumab on T cell reconstitution and anti-myeloma effects in patients with relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation

Christopher Klebanoff
Immunologic and genomic characterization of an immunogenic subset of HR+/HER2- human breast cancers

Alexander Lesokhin
Evaluating oncogenic driver effects on tumor immunity through interrogation of the HLA ligandome

Richard J. Lin
Targetable inflamm-aging milieu and bone marrow niche senescence in older AML patients in allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation – an exploratory analysis

Wungki Park
Immunogenomic role of homologous recombination deficiency in pancreatic cancer

Triparna Sen
Overcoming treatment resistance to immune checkpoint inhibition of the PD-1/PD-L1 axis in small cell lung cancer

Joseph Sun
Impact of tumor-intrinsic gene expression on natural killer cell

February 2019 Career Development Awards

Samuel Bakhoum
Targeting innate immune pathways in triple-negative breast cancer

JianJiong Gao
cBioPortal Enhancements to Support Analysis and Visualization of ImmunoOncology Data

Estibaliz Lopez Rodrigo
Microglial Mosaicism in BRAFV600E Glioma Progression

2018 Awardees

April 2018 Pilot Grants

John Chodera
Physics-based computational prediction of cancer-associated mutant MHC class II epitopes

Justin Cross, Bianca Santomasso 
Investigating the metabolic basis of neurotoxicity in B-ALL patients treated with CD19-modified CAR T cells

Alan Hanash 
Modeling autoimmune side effects of cancer immunotherapy in the GI tract

Morgan Huse 
Targeting Cancer Cell Biomechanics to Enhance Anti-Tumor Immune Function

Mortiz Kircher, Taha Merghoub 
Development of an Imaging Technology for in vivo Multiplexed Detection of Key Markers in Immunotherapy

Jason Lewis 
Developing 18F labeled PD-1 tracer for rapid in vivo evaluation of PD-L1 expression as a biomarker for immune checkpoint blockade

Raphael Pelossof, Julio Garcia-Aguilar 
Immunological landscape associated with KRAS mutation in colorectal cancer

Andrea Schietinger
Biomarkers and epigenetic programs defining functionality and re-programmability of PD1hi TIL in human solid tumors

Ronglai Shen, Michael Postow 
Linking peripheral blood T cell phenotype with genomic features and clinical outcome in patients treated with checkpoint inhibition

2017 Awardees

September 2017 Career Development Awards

Liang Deng
Mechanisms of systemic antitumor immunity induced by intratumoral injection of inactivated vs. live oncolytic vaccinia

Jonathan Peled
Microbiota biomarkers & mechanisms of gastrointestinal inflammation: GVHD and checkpoint-blockade colitis

March 2017 Pilot Grants

Hikmat Al-Ahmadie, Alexandra Snyder, David Solit
Exploring intratumoral heterogeneity in urothelial carcinoma and its potential role in resistance to immune check point inhibitors

Justin Cross 
Metabolomics strategies to investigate mechanisms of immunotherapy induced colitis

Ronald DeMatteo, Timothy Bowler
Determining the presence and activity of immune-suppressive mechanisms in sarcoma

Samuel Funt, Darren Feldman, Alexandra Snyder
Identifying predictors of response and resistance to checkpoint blockade therapy in patients with relapsed/refractory germ cell tumors

A. Ari Hakimi 
Immunogenomic phenotyping of clear cell renal cell carcinoma

Jonathan Peled 
Investigation of immunoglobulin A coating intestinal bacteria in multiple myeloma

Melody Smith, Scott James
Induction of tissue-specific tolerance to inhibit graft vs. host responses while retaining graft vs. malignancy using synthetic biology approach

2016 Awardees

April 2016 Pilot Grants

Charlotte E. Ariyan
Project: Neoadjuvant and adjuvant checkpoint blockade in patients with clinical stage III or oligometastatic stage IV melanoma

Travis Hollmann
Project: The landscape of somatic mutations in melanoma tumor infiltrating lymphocytes

Alexander M. Lesokhin
Project: Neoantigen-directed vaccination for multiple myeloma

Taha Merghoub
Project: Study of a nonconventional subset of suppressive CD4+ T cell as a parameter to optimize treatment with checkpoint blockade

October 2016 Pilot Grants

Geoffrey Y. Ku
Project: Immune correlative assays for phase Ib/II study of durvalumab and chemoradiation for locally advanced esophageal and gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma

Scott W. Lowe
Project: Therapy-induced senescence and immune cell surveillance of KRAS mutant cancers

Gil Redelman-Sidi
Project: BCG Therapy of Bladder Cancer – Role of Tumor Antigens in Clinical Response

Michael H. A. Roehrl
Project: Integrated Proteogenomic Discovery of the Cancer Antigen-Omes of MSS and MSI Colorectal Adenocarcinomas for Diagnostic and Immunotherapeutic Monitoring

Bianca Santomasso
Project: Defining immune profiles across cerebrospinal fluid, tumor, and blood in patients with brain tumors

David Scheinberg
Project: Determining the ligandome of T cell receptors and T cell receptor mimic antibodies

Alexander Shoustari
Project: Beta-2 microglobulin alterations and primary or secondary resistance to immune checkpoint inhibition in melanoma and non-small cell lung cancer

Joseph C. Sun
Project: Impact of tumor-intrinsic gene expression on natural killer cell responses against cancer

Marcel van den Brink
Project: Thymic regenerative strategies to enhance cancer immunotherapy with checkpoint blockade