O’Neal Cancer Center announces recipients of the O’Neal Invests Fall 2026 cycle

The UAB O’Neal Cancer Center is pleased to announce the latest O’Neal Invests grant awards. In this cycle, four projects received grants, with two additional grants receiving funding through the Breast Cancer Research Foundation of Alabama (BCRFA).

The four internally funded grant recipients are listed below.

Pre-R01 Grants

Christopher Willey, M.D., Ph.D.

Department of Radiation Oncology

Protein Kinase A as a Target for Enhancing Tumor Treating Fields Therapy in Glioblastoma

Upender Manne, Ph.D.

Department of Pathology

Division of Anatomic Pathology

Targeting KRAS-P4HA1 Tumor and Microenvironment Signaling in Pancreatic Cancer

Catalyst Grants

Qing Richard Lu, Ph.D.

Department of Pediatrics

Division of Hematology and Oncology

Oncolytic HSV-Enhanced CAR-T Therapy for DIPG/DMG

Gao Guo, Ph.D.

Department of Neurosurgery

Kinase-inhibited EGFR Drives EV-mediated Therapeutic Resistance in Glioblastoma

In addition to these four grants, two additional grants were awarded through O’Neal Invests through generous funding from the BCRFA. Read about the additional grants at: https://www.onealcanceruab.org/news-and-events/news/oneal-invests-fall-2026-bcrfa/

O’Neal Invests grants fund UAB investigators initiating new cancer-related projects to do key preliminary work to enable competitive extramural applications. Applications for the twelfth grant cycle were submitted in Fall 2026.

There are two O’Neal Invests RFAs per year, in the spring and fall. O’Neal Cancer Center membership is not a requirement to apply, but awardees must become members. The grants are peer-reviewed by a panel of UAB faculty.

To learn more about the O’Neal Invests awards program, visit our website at https://www.onealcanceruab.org/giving/oneal-invests/.