Houston Chemist Wins $2 Million NIH Grant for Cancer Treatment Research

A Rice University chemist has won a $2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for his work reprogramming the genetic code and exploring the role certain cells play in the development of diseases such as cancer and neurological disorders.

The funds were awarded to Han Xiao, a Norman Hackerman-Welch Young Investigator, associate professor of chemistry, through the NIH’s Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) program, which supports medically-focused laboratories.

Xiao will use the five-year grant to develop non-canonical amino acids (ncAAs) with diverse properties to help build proteins, according to a statement by Rice. He and his team will then use ncAAs to explore in vivo sensors for enzymes involved in post-translational modifications (PTMs), which play a role in the development of cancers and neurological disorders. Additionally, the team will seek to develop a way to detect these enzymes in living organisms in real time rather than in the laboratory.

“This innovative approach could revolutionize the way we understand and control cellular functions,” Xiao said in the statement.

Rice said these developments could have major implications for how diseases are treated, particularly for epigenetic inhibitors used to treat cancer.

Xiao helped lead the charge to launch the new Synthesis X Center this spring. The center, which grew out of informal meetings between Xio’s lab and others at the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center at Baylor College of Medicine, aims to improve cancer outcomes by translating basic research into clinical applications.

They will rely on annual retreats, during which researchers will be able to share new results, and also plan to organize a national conference, the first scheduled for this fall, titled “Synthetic Innovations Toward a Cure for Cancer.”