Mandip Sachdeva (pictured), professor of pharmaceutical sciences with the Florida A&M University College of Pharmacy, and Stephen Safe, distinguished professor of toxicology at the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (CVM) and the Institute for Biotechnology (IBT) at the Texas A&M University Health Sciences Center, recently received a grant from the Department of Defense (DOD) - Army Breast Cancer Research Program (BCRP) for their project entitled "The Role of Novel Substituted Diindolylmethane Analogues in the Treatment of Triple - Negative and ErbB2 - Positive Breast Cancer" which will be funded $1.4 million over four years.The BCRP was initiated to promote research focused on eliminating breast cancer and to challenge the scientific community to develop innovative approaches that will foster new directions and growth toward the battle against breast cancer.
According to the BCRP application, "The BCRP focuses its funding on innovative projects that have the potential to make a significant impact on breast cancer, particularly those involving multidisciplinary and/or multi-institutional collaborations and alliances. Under investigated avenues of research and novel applications of existing technologies are strongly encouraged."
Under this grant Texas A&M University will serve as a mentoring institution to Florida A&M University because Florida A&M University is a predominantly black university and the BCPR is listed under the agreement with the DOD and the Historically Black Colleges and Universities/Minority Institutions (HBCU/MI) Partnership Training Award. This award will help build new collaborations with members of the chemistry department from Florida A&M University and the CVM as well as enhance current relationships."
"I am very excited about this particular grant because it will allow us to expand on our current research on breast cancer, and this will involve training independent researchers at Florida A&M to collaborate in this research and to promote future independent research efforts on their own," Safe said. "This grant is also very beneficial because of the involvement of scientists with expertise in chemistry, pharmaceuticals, molecular and cell biology and this will facilitate development of clinically useful anticancer drugs."