Two Dana-Farber Researchers Receive Prestigious New Innovator Award from the National Institutes of Health

Xin Gu, PhD, and Nicholas Polizzi, PhD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have received New Innovator Awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) High-Risk, High-Reward Research program. The prestigious award supports early career investigators pursuing highly innovative research with the potential for broad impact on biomedical and behavioral science.

Gu, an independent investigator in the Dana-Farber Department of Cancer Biology and assistant professor in the Harvard Medical School Department of Cell Biology, and Polizzi, an independent investigator in the Dana-Farber Department of Cancer Biology and assistant professor in the Harvard Medical School Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, will each receive $2.375 million in funding over five years to further their impact and address challenges related to biomedical science. Gu was awarded grant number DP2CA325381-01, and Polizzi received grant number DP2GM170825-01.

Established at Dana-Farber in September 2024, the Xi Gu Lab elucidates molecular mechanisms that are key for cellular homeostasis, including nuclear protein turnover by a novel ubiquitin-independent mechanism: the midnolin-proteasome pathway. The Gu lab aims to discover more ubiquitin-independent protein degradation pathways naturally used by cells, define their biochemical mechanisms and harness them for therapeutic applications. Gu has been recognized with several prior awards, including the Damon Runyon-Dale F. Frey Award for Breakthrough Scientists, a Klingenstein Fellowship Award in Neuroscience, a Smith Family Foundation Award for Excellence in Biomedical Research and selection as a Pew Biomedical Scholar.

The Polizzi Lab uses protein design to study how proteins bind to small molecules. Polizzi’s team uses deep learning to create novel biosensors for cancer therapeutics and protein-based tools for chemical biology. By designing proteins from scratch that bind small-molecule drugs, the team is investigating how proteins change shape upon drug binding, which in turn affects their function. This work not only elucidates how human proteins could be more effectively drugged, but also creates new ways to make existing drugs safer. Polizzi previously was the recipient of an NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence award and has received high-risk, high-reward research funding from the W. M. Keck Foundation.

The NIH Common Fund High-Risk, High-Reward Research program supports researchers at different career stages who propose highly innovative research that may be difficult to pursue with traditional NIH funding mechanisms. The program consists of four awards: The NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, New Innovator Award, Transformative Research Award and Early Independence Award.

This year, 58 research grants were awarded, totaling approximately $237.5 million, to support investigators pursuing bold ideas that challenge conventional approaches and could open new pathways to scientific discovery. In addition to the NIH Common Fund, funding comes from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) and the Office of Research Innovation, Validation and Application (ORIVA).