Initial Funding Launches 14 Innovative Projects For Accelerating Advances Against Prostate Cancer

Santa Monica, CA, June 1, 2011 —– The Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF) today announced that it has funded 14 new Creativity Awards for advanced prostate cancer research. These two-year awards are designed to support innovative research ideas that have the potential to achieve breakthroughs for improved prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment. PCF Creativity Awards aid the advancement of the world’s most imaginative, new research ideas that are not yet funded by any government or foundation sources.

The funded projects represent a range of research areas including biomarkers for earlier and more precise detection and treatment, the development of new, nano-enabled therapeutics for patients with metastatic disease, and identifying new targets for drug development.

“We were impressed with the unique ideas represented by the applicants. A rigorous process that included 71 peer reviewers vetted the 14 selected treatment sciences projects from a field of more than 200 applications representing leading institutions in 10 countries,” reports Howard Soule, PhD, executive vice president and chief science officer for PCF. “These awards fortify our pipeline of compelling ideas to cultivate new solutions for the prostate cancer problem. We believe that our investment in these projects will push scientific discovery and deliver better therapies for patients with advanced prostate cancer.”

Historically, 70 percent of such PCF awards have gone on to attract additional multi-year funding from PCF and other sources within three years of their original funding by PCF.

“Eight of the awards are going to investigators who have never before been funded by PCF and we are very excited to track the progress of these new ideas.” added Dr. Soule. “They have enormous potential to deliver breakthrough discoveries and ultimately enable physicians to cure more and overtreat less.”

Learn more about PCF's 2011 Creativity Award Winners

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About the Prostate Cancer Foundation

The Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF) is the world’s leading philanthropic organization funding and accelerating research. Founded in 1993, PCF has raised more than $475 million and provided funding to over 1,600 research projects at nearly 200 institutions in 15 countries around the world. PCF advocates for greater awareness of prostate cancer and more efficient investment of governmental research funds supporting transformational cancer research. Our efforts have helped produce a 20-fold increase in government funding for prostate cancer. More information about PCF can be found at pcf.org.

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