South Middlesex Times

A Rutgers researcher has been awarded a $2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to further develop nucleic acid therapies for cancer treatment. Enver Cagri Izgu, an assistant professor at Rutgers-New Brunswick's School of Arts and Sciences, will lead this project under the Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA).

Izgu and his team aim to create molecules with "programmed functionality" to address challenges in gene expression modulation therapies. These challenges include poor target selectivity, biostability, and bioavailability.

"Our lab is approaching these problems by designing chemical biology tools that are highly sophisticated and adaptable," said Izgu. He noted that the research would focus on aggressive cancer types with low survival rates by suppressing proteins linked to cancer cell growth.

The NIH MIRA program offers stability and flexibility for scientific productivity and breakthroughs. "The Office for Research (OfR) has supported our journey to the NIH MIRA," Izgu mentioned, highlighting prior support from OfR’s Busch Biomedical Grant program and additional funding sources like the NIH Trailblazer Award.

Pragati Sharma from Rutgers' Office for Research emphasized the significance of this award: "Dr. Izgu’s research has the potential to place many arrows in the quiver for the advancement of nucleic acid therapy approaches."