A global, interdisciplinary team of researchers, including Dr Fieke Froeling has been selected to receive a Cancer Grand Challenges award of up to £20m over five years to tackle the Cancer inequities challenge
Team SAMBAI
Cancer Grand Challenges is a global funding platform, co-founded by Cancer Research UK and the National Cancer Institute in the US, that supports a community of diverse, global teams to come together, think differently and take on some of cancer’s toughest challenges.
Fieke is part of the Cancer Grand Challenges team SAMBAI which is led by Melissa Davis, Morehouse School of Medicine. Inequities in cancer prevention, screening, and treatment lead to disparities in cancer incidence and mortality and are a major public health concern. Team SAMBAI aims to build an unprecedented resource, which will comprise a comprehensive measurement of social, environmental, genetic and biological factors that can be used to help define the causes of disparate outcomes in the selected populations. The team will focus on prostate, breast and pancreatic cancers spanning diverse cohorts of African descent from regions of Africa, the UK and the US.
The SAMBAI team unites clinicians, advocates and scientists with expertise in computational biology, epidemiology, exposomics, genomics, immunology and more, across 15 institutions and 4 countries. This team is funded by Cancer Research UK and the National Cancer Institute through Cancer Grand Challenges. It is one of five new teams that was announced today, representing a total investment of $125m to tackle some of the toughest challenges in cancer research.
Dr Fieke Froeling
Dr Fieke Froeling leads the Molecular Subtypes and the Host in Pancreatic Cancer group based at the CRUK Scotland Institute and the University of Glasgow's School of Cancer Sciences and is a Senior Clinical Lecturer in Pancreatic Cancer. She is also an Honorary Consultant Medical Oncologist at the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre treating patients with pancreatic cancer.
Fieke is one of our McNab Fellows, who receive funding from the Annie McNab Bequest. In 2019, the Institute was named as a beneficiary in the will of Ms Annie McNab who - although originally from Paisley just outside Glasgow - moved to New York in the United States many years ago to become a nanny to the Irving family. Annie's very generous bequest will support cancer research in Glasgow and West of Scotland in a number of important ways.
