NIH awards SUNY Poly professor a nearly $900K grant for breast-cancer research

ALBANY, N.Y. — A professor at SUNY Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Poly) in Albany will use a federal grant of $890,000 in breast-cancer research that involves multiple investigators.

The funding for SUNY Poly’s James Castracane is part of a five-year, $2.9 million federal grant.

Castracane is a professor and head of the nanobioscience constellation at SUNY Poly’s Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE).

Castracane — along with John Condeelis and David Entenberg from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City — are the principal investigators on the grant, SUNY Poly said in a news release issued Wednesday.

The trio will lead a research program to utilize imaging technologies to “identify, quantify, and locate” the cells that contribute to tumor progression, metastasis, and chemotherapy resistance.

The National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Cancer Institute (NCI) awarded the funding. The NIH is part of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

“I congratulate Professor Castracane for this important NIH grant that paves the way for a better understanding of breast cancer and how we can more efficiently treat this disease that affects far too many people,” Bahgat Sammakia, interim president of SUNY Poly, said in the release.

Castracane will lead SUNY Poly’s research, which continues the school’s partnership with the Einstein College of Medicine, Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The funding will also support educational opportunities for a number of SUNY Poly graduate students and leverage SUNY Poly’s clean-room facilities, the school said.

Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com