USA’s Grelet Receives Prestigious NIH MERIT Award

Dr. Simon Grelet, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the Frederick P. Whiddon College of Medicine at the University of South Alabama (USA), has received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) MERIT Award of $1.8 million for five years. The R37 grant is designed to provide long-term funding support to investigators whose research competence and productivity are distinctly superior and who are highly likely to continue to perform outstandingly. Grelet’s award will support his research efforts to understand the contribution of the nervous system in promoting cancer progression, with a focus on the role of the nerve-cancer transfer of mitochondria in promoting cancer metastasis. He and his team will work to identify the key mediators involved in the transfers of and assess the impact of inhibiting this process on cancer progression. Grelet’s research into how cancer cells exploit their microenvironment, especially nearby nerve cells, to grow and spread was published this summer in the scientific journal Nature.