National Cancer Institute Awards Grant To UNC Asheville Professor For the First Time

This week, the University of North Carolina Asheville announce that Professor of Biology Ted Meigs, Ph.D., is the recipient of a $430,000 grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the federal government's principal agency for cancer research and training. NCI is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 

“It is imperative that we gain a better mechanistic understanding of the molecules that underlie this disease,” said Professor Meigs. “Our research, with the generous support of the National Cancer Institute, is part of an overall effort by the cancer research community worldwide that ultimately will save millions of lives. It’s exciting for our undergraduate Biology students to contribute to this critical work, an opportunity that is unique to UNC Asheville." 

The highly-competitive award – only 14% were funded from 2020-2025 – is the first from NCI to a UNC Asheville faculty member. Professor Meigs’ grant, Regulation of Tumorigenic G protein Signaling by Novel Post-translational Mechanisms, seeks to identify the underlying proteins that contribute to cancer, a disease that accounts for 10 million deaths worldwide each year, with the long-term goal to develop new medicines to eradicate cancerous tumors.