Two UT Health San Antonio scientists awarded V Foundation grants to advance innovative cancer research

This year in the United States, it is projected that more than 2 million people will be diagnosed with cancer. Additionally, more than 600,000 people will die of the disease - an average of nearly 1,680 each day.

The V Foundation for Cancer Research was founded in 1993 by ESPN and basketball coach Jim Valvano with the mission to achieve "Victory Over Cancer." Since its inception, the foundation has awarded more than $353 million in research grants to scientists and physicians working on pioneering research and new techniques that could transform approaches to cancer treatment.

Two scientists from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) received V Foundation grants in 2024, and one investigator received the Martin D. Abeloff Scholar Award - the foundation's annual honor for the V Scholar proposal with the highest score.

Elizabeth Wasmuth, PhD - Scholar award and Abeloff Scholar award

Elizabeth Wasmuth, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Structural Biology, Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long School of Medicine, UT Health San Antonio, with joint appointments at the Mays Cancer Center, home to UT Health San Antonio MD Anderson Cancer Center and the Greehey Children's Cancer Research Institute, as well as the co-founder and co-director of the UT Health San Antonio Cryo-EM facility. Wasmuth was named this year's V Foundation Abeloff Scholar for her proposal related to steroid receptor aberrations in cancers such as prostate, breast, uterine and ovarian. Her grant is $600,000 over the next three years.

"Dr. Wasmuth has developed a venue for discovering new therapeutic targets for hormone-related malignant diseases. I am so glad that V Foundation recognizes her work with the highest merit," said Mays Cancer Center Executive Director Lei Zheng, MD, PhD, vice president for oncology and professor of medicine at UT Health San Antonio.

Wasmuth's award is funded through the Stuart Scott Memorial Cancer Research Fund. The V Foundation set up the fund in honor of a well-known ESPN sportscaster and the fund supports cancer health disparities research. As a structural biologist and biochemist, Wasmuth's background is unique in cancer biology, but that may be why her research stands out.

Current hormone-receptor driven cancers rely on treatments that are "decoys" of the steroids testosterone, androgen or estrogen. In prostate cancer, Wasmuth's primary field of research, these types of treatments generally work for approximately two years, but patients inevitably develop resistance. Resistance occurs either as a resurgence of the androgen receptor or, in about 40% of cases, because the drugs used are too strong.

"I think people are understanding that you can't have the one-size-fits-all approach and just shut something down, especially something so critical like androgen receptors in an organ like the prostate," Wasmuth said.

Broad-spectrum androgen receptor inhibition has been the current approach in the field of prostate cancer. Targeted approaches have proven difficult, Wasmuth said, because this protein is notoriously difficult to isolate and work with. In her postdoctoral work, Wasmuth developed the first system to acquire pure, active, full-length androgen receptors that can be tested in the lab.

"Every cancer is different. Every cancer has a unique potpourri of different proteins or genomic alterations that drive it. Androgen receptors can be turned off or on by all kinds of different bad actors. It can even turn itself on through other mechanisms that are not understood," Wasmuth said.

Her unique reductionist system can test what current therapies are working, how resistance develops and what new drugs may provide a more nuanced approach.

"It is humbling that the kind of work we are doing is now being accepted and leading to new breakthroughs in the larger prostate cancer space, and I'm very proud that this is putting UT Health San Antonio on the map. The community should be proud of what is being built here and what will continue to transpire with the merger," Wasmuth said.

Click here to read more about Wasmuth's V Foundation proposal

Josephine Taverna, MD - A Grant of Her Own: The Women Scientists Innovation Award for Cancer Research

Josephine Taverna, MD, assistant professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine and the Division of Hematology and Oncology, Mays Cancer Center, home to UT Health San Antonio MD Anderson Cancer Center, received a V Foundation grant for her proposal to investigate checkpoint inhibitors for lung cancer treatment that can block cancer signaling within tumor habitats to halt growth, treatment resistance and metastasis. Taverna received the A Grant of Her Own: The Women Scientists Innovation Award Translational Research grant, one of only six recipients in the United States to earn the $800,000, four-year grant.

"Dr. Taverna has set an outstanding role model for women physician-scientists at Mays Cancer Center. We are very proud of her," said Zheng.

Taverna said her proposal continues the research she's been working on since 2017. She and her team will investigate the microenvironments of lung cancer tumors. These systems consist of immune cells, blood cells and connective tissues that allow tumors to grow and spread throughout the body to other organs like the brain, bones, liver and lungs. Taverna and her team discovered that certain proteins serve as "on switches" that lead to tumor growth, resistance to treatment and the spread of cancer throughout the body.

"We found that there are two important cancer pathways - AXL and JAK/STAT3. These synchronized pathways become upregulated, allowing tumors to grow exponentially and spread. When we inhibit both pathways, we find that tumor cells become weaker and cannot effectively grow or recruit supportive host cells into the tumor microenvironment," Taverna said.

Additionally, these signaling proteins allow the cancer cells to communicate to other host cells and signal for protection against the immune system. They found that blocking these signaling proteins halts the tumor's ability to communicate to other cells in its ecosystem, which inhibits tumor growth and spread. Taverna said therapies based on this treatment could potentially improve outcomes for people with lung cancer, and they will test this hypothesis in two investigator-initiated clinical trials.

"In mouse models, we found that lung tumor growth halts and cancer cells show a less aggressive phenotype when the AXL-STAT3 signaling is blocked. As the next step, we will be conducting a clinical trial studying the therapeutic effect of AXL inhibitors and JAK inhibitors in patients with metastatic lung cancer. As part of my V Foundation research, we will be studying the effects of AXL and JAK inhibitors in combination with immunotherapy," she said.

Taverna said this V Foundation award will allow her team to conduct a second clinical trial with up to 20 individuals with metastatic lung cancer, testing the AXL and JAK inhibitors in combination with immunotherapy. She explained that many lung cancer patients become resistant to chemotherapy and/or immunotherapy because AXL and JAK/STAT3 signaling become upregulated to promote drug resistance and tumor growth.

"AXL-STAT3 signaling pathway could represent the Achilles heel of chemoimmunotherapy. We predict that triple combination therapy will result in longer remissions so that our patients can stay on the immunotherapy and targeted therapy longer because it disrupts the intercellular communication between cancer cells and supportive host cells," she said.

Taverna said her passion and driving force is a love for her patients.

"Every patient is like family to me. I deeply feel the weight of their struggle. While we can't always overcome lung cancer, especially when it becomes resistant to treatment, that reality only strengthens my resolve to keep fighting for them." she said.

Click here to read more about Taverna's V Foundation proposal

Find out more about the V Foundation here.

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