More than $9 million in Bertarelli Rare Cancers Fund grants has been awarded to date to 19 principal investigators or co-principal investigators across the Harvard Medical School community, including Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Massachusetts General Hospital. The PIs and their project summaries are described below. Together, these studies provide a useful base of research to build a robust community of researchers interested in rare cancers.

	Nabeel Bardeesy, PhD Associate Professor of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School Proteogenomic approach to identifying vulnerabilities of fibrolamellar carcinoma   This grant will use state-of-the-art methods to identify processes that are essential for the proliferation and survival of fibrolamellar carcinomas and then develop therapeutic strategies to exploit these vulnerabilities.
	Stephen Elledge, PhD Gregor Mendel Professor of Genetics and of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital A rare cancer fusion oncogene ORF library for the community   This grant will be used to develop a resource for the community that will prepare gene copies of all fusion oncogenes found in rare cancers in useful forms. These gene copies will be available to the community to allow researchers to express these oncogenes essentially at will and in any experimental setting.
	Christopher French, MD Associate Professor of Pathology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School Improving the diagnosis and treatment of NUT carcinoma through in vitro and in vivo models   This grant will be used to study how the oncoprotein that drives the development of NUT carcinoma works by determining how it interacts with the key cellular transcription machinery.
	John Hanna, MD, PhD Associate Professor of Pathology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School New translocation-associated clear cell cancers with morphologic and molecular similarity to clear cell odontogenic carcinoma   This grant will be used to explore the pathology archives to discover and characterize new examples of clear cell carcinomas.
	John Iafrate, MD, PhD Austin L. Vickery, Jr. Professor of Pathology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School Liquid biopsy tumor-specific biomarkers to detect early recurrence, monitor and guide therapy in clear cell odontogenic carcinoma   This grant will be used to build and validate a blood test to follow the progression of CCOC during and after treatment.
	Andrew Lane, MD, PhD Associate Professor of Medicine, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School Blastic plasmacytoid dendritic cell neoplasm (BPDCN) genomics and therapeutic target identification   This grant will be used to identify the essential proteins that allow BPDCN to proliferate and then develop therapeutic strategies to target these essential tumor activities.
	Vamsi Mootha, MD ’98 Professor of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical School Professor of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital Profiling, modeling, and targeting of Hürthle cell carcinoma   This grant will be used to expand on the discovery of a new class of cancer oncogenes whose normal role provides energy for the cell. The study will explore the basis for this role in tumor development and seek ways of inhibiting the activity of these new oncogenes.
	Miguel Rivera, MD Associate Professor of Pathology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School Targeting the function of EWS fusions in CCOC   This grant will characterize the function of the EWS fusion oncogenes that are essential to the development of most CCOC and test a variety of therapeutic strategies that will inhibit the activity of these proteins. Success in these studies would provide the starting points for new drug development approaches for CCOC.
	Kimberly Stegmaier, MD Professor of Pediatrics, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School Targeting EWS-fusion oncoproteins   This grant will explore two exciting new drug development strategies for targeting EWS-fusion proteins and will build a cell model for a newly discovered EWS fusion protein with the transcription factor CREM.