Washington’s CARE Fund awards Dr. Lucas Sullivan Distinguished Researcher grant

Sullivan studies metabolic pathways required for cancer growth, progression
A portrait of Dr. Lucas Sullivan
Dr. Lucas Sullivan Photo by Robert Hood / Fred Hutch News Service

The Andy Hill Cancer Research Endowment, a public-private partnership known as the CARE Fund, this week named Dr. Lucas Sullivan of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center a CARE Fund Distinguished Researcher. The honor came with a $500,000 grant to further Sullivan’s research into the role of cell metabolism in cancer biology.

“His research into cancer metabolomics is highly significant, innovative and timely, and likely to have broad impacts in multiple fields, including cancer biology … and therapeutic developments that target metabolism,” the CARE Fund stated on its website.

Sullivan and colleagues seek to understand how metabolism supports cell function. Their major focus is to identify the metabolic pathways that are required for cancer growth and progression, with the goal of identifying new targets for cancer therapy.

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He joined the Fred Hutch faculty in December 2018 after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.

Sullivan’s award was part of the CARE Fund’s fourth round of grant awards totaling $1 million to advance cancer research in the state. The public funds, which support recruitment and start-up packages for CARE Fund Distinguished Researchers, will be matched by more than $1.6 million in non-state funds committed by the host organizations. To date, a total of $5.65 million has been awarded for the recruitment of nine world-class cancer researchers in Washington state and the support of two research projects. Nearly $27 million has been committed by non-state resources to match state funding.

The other CARE Fund award recipient announced this week was Dr. Wei Wei of Seattle’s Institute for Systems Biology, who develops single-cell tools and computational approaches to address significant questions in systems biomedicine.

Past Fred Hutch CARE Fund recipients include Dr. Heather Greenlee, a doctor of naturopathic medicine, cancer epidemiologist and director of the Integrative Medicine Program at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance; Dr. Mark Headley, an immunologist who studies tumor metastasis; Dr. Geoffrey Hill, head of Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation at the Hutch who holds the José Carreras/E. Donnall Thomas Endowed Chair for Cancer Research; Dr. Thomas Kensler, an expert in chemoprevention; Dr. Evan Newell, who studies human T-cell immunology; and Dr. Lev Silberstein, a clinical researcher who studies bone marrow failure, myelodysplasia and related syndromes.

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Read more about Fred Hutch achievements and accolades.

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Kristen Woodward, a former associate editor at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, had been in communications at Fred Hutch for more than 20 years. Before that, she was a managing editor at the University of Michigan Health System and a reporter/editor at The Holland Sentinel, a daily in western Michigan. She has received many national awards for health and science writing. She received her B.A. in journalism from Michigan State University. 

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