David Jones, PhD, and Brad Cairns, PhD, have received a one-year, $100,000 grant from the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Foundation (SWCRF) for their research project Regulation of DNA Demethylation in Colorectal Cancer. SWCRF grants are awarded to researchers looking for new therapies to reverse abnormal growth and differentiation of cancer cells.

"We hypothesize that the DNA demethylase system is critical in both initiation and progression phases of colon tumor development and that pharmacologic inhibition of DNA demethylase system will prevent the renewal of colon cancer stem cells, thereby preventing tumor growth," Jones and Cairns wrote in a summary of the project. "In this project, we will determine if the DNA demethylase initiates and contributes to progression of colon cancer."

The grant is part of a SWCRF program called the Institute Without Walls, a network of cancer investigators who share their expertise, research findings, and technologies with each other. Cairns and Jones will present their research to other grant recipients and an external scientific advisory panel at the SWCRF's Annual Scientific Review in May 2013.