UAB Division of Surgical Oncology Assistant Professor Angela Carter, Ph.D., was awarded a Discovery Boost Grant (DBG) from the American Cancer Society for her project entitled “A novel class of microbial-based cancer therapy” – marking the first time this award has been granted to a UAB faculty member.

These grants support exploratory cancer research across the research continuum in order to develop new and highly innovative areas of future investigation.

"Because microbes help facilitate so many physiological processes in the human body, our research team hopes to create microbes that, when activated, can produce therapeutic components within targeted tumors," says Carter.

Over the course of two years, Carter will receive $300,000 to continue expanding the knowledge base on microbes and their potential usage as therapeutics.

This research grant marks a continuation of Carter's body of cancer research that began in her postdoctoral work, in which she identified biomarkers with the capacity to predict tumor response to select targeted therapeutics and the development of novel animal models of neuroendocrine cancer.