Dr. Anna Gukovskaya from UCLA, a past Hirshberg Foundation Seed Grant recipient, has received more than $8 million in 5-year funding from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health, to elucidate the pathogenic mechanism initiating and driving pancreatitis, a common and potentially fatal inflammatory disease of the pancreas. Pancreatitis is a major risk factor in developing pancreatic cancer. This is the first ever multi-institutional and multidisciplinary Program project grant awarded in pancreatitis, with key investigators from Yale University, the University of Wisconsin, University of California, San Diego, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and the University of California, Los Angeles.
Dr. Anna Gukovskaya and her team expressed great appreciation and gratitude to the Hirshberg Foundation for their support, which helped generate key preliminary data for this successful application.