The National Institute of Health’s National Cancer Institute recently awarded a $443,330 grant to Clarkson University’s Associate Professor of Chemistry & Biomolecular Science, Costel C. Darie.
The research focuses on identifying proteins in breast milk that predict cancer. The award is known as an Academic Research Enhancement Awards (AREA) grant, intended to fund research but also to train undergraduate students.
“This kind of grant is usually awarded to Biology professors,” said Darie. “We’ve never had an AREA grant in the Department of Chemistry & Biomolecular Science at Clarkson; this is the first one” ended Darie.
Darie’s achievement in obtaining this grant was recognized in late 2021 via an email to Clarkson from Senator Schumer’s office and press releases by Congresswoman Stefanik.
The grant is a collaboration between the Biochemistry and Proteomics Lab at Clarkson University, led by Professor Darie, the Breast Milk Lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, led by Professors Kathleen Arcaro and Brian Pentecost and the Bioinformatics Lab at the New York University School of Medicine, led by Professor David Fenyo. Sumona Mondal, an Associate Professor of Mathematics at Clarkson University is also a co-investigator in this grant.
