Weill Cornell Medicine announced that David Simon, PhD, has received the 2023 Pershing Square Sohn Prize for Young Investigators in Cancer Research. Currently, Dr. Simon, Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and the Fernholz Foundation Research Scholar in Neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medicine, and his colleagues are researching the mechanisms that allow for the long-term survival of axons as well as the factors that may impact their survival. He plans to use the funding from the award to analyze how sensory axons that project to and enter melanoma cells may affect the tumor microenvironment. Through a technique called whole-mount immunolabeling, Dr. Simon and his colleagues will be able to develop three-dimensional spatial imaging and manipulate the axons. “The ultimate hope is that what we find in melanoma would be applicable to other cancer types,” Dr. Simon concluded.
May 25, 2023