The Fibrolamellar Cancer Foundation (FCF) is proud to announce The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research has awarded their coveted Aspire Award to Dr. Paul Thomas, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital for fibrolamellar carcinoma immunotherapy research. The Aspire Award (Accelerating Scientific Platforms and Innovative Research), is designed to enable innovative approaches to solving high-impact problems in cancer research that tend to fall outside the scope of other funding opportunities.   Working closely with the FCF, Dr Thomas’ winning application of $250,000, focuses on the identification of T-cell receptors specific for fibrolamellar carcinoma to enable personalized immunotherapy for this lethal liver cancer that affects mainly adolescents and young adults The University of Tennessee will be collaborating with St Jude on this initiative..

Launched in 2017, The Mark Foundation pursues its mission by supporting a global portfolio of groundbreaking research carried out by individual investigators, multi-investigator teams, and inter-institutional collaborations. Since its launch, the Foundation has awarded over $85 million in grant funding to over 50 institutions across 22 U.S. states and 6 countries.

The relationship of The Mark Foundation and the FCF represents the importance of collaboration and partnership that is imperative for advancing research towards a cure for fibrolamellar. On behalf of our patient and research community, the FCF thanks The Mark Foundation for their valuable support.