FAYETTEVILLE — Researchers at the University of Arkansas have been awarded $1.5 million from the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health to develop new molecules and biopharmaceuticals that improve a patient's immune response against tumors.
The goal of the five-year grant is to help clinicians attack hidden metastatic tumors and prevent cancer recurrence. Metastasis is the development of secondary malignancy away from the primary site of cancer.
David Zaharoff, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering and the principal investigator for the project, says metastasis — not a patient's primary tumor — kills about 90 percent of cancer patients.