Phil and Penny Knight announced on August 14, 2025, a record-breaking $2 billion gift to the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute to transform the future of cancer care and set a new standard globally. The Knights have a long history of supporting Dr. Druker and the Knight Cancer Institute’s efforts to end cancer as we know it. 

With the magnitude of this generous gift and what we set out to do, the Knight Cancer Institute will become self-governed within OHSU. To accomplish this, the Knight Cancer Group will be created to lead the Knight Cancer Institute and manage OHSU’s cancer services. It will have its own board of directors, and Dr. Druker will be the inaugural president of this new organization. 

We will Give Cancer Hell and raise the bar for what cancer care looks like across the world.

Read more on OHSU Now.

Manuscript invitation: Cancers

Dr. Sanjay Malhotra with members of the Malhotra lab, Drs. Dhanir Tailor (Research Assistant Professor) and Annah Rolig (Scientific Writer), are guest editors for a special issue of Cancers titled From Molecular Insights to Cancer Treatments: Progress in Translational Science. CDCB faculty are invited to submit manuscripts by March 31, 2026.

Recent accolades and funding

The Agarwal lab has several accolades to highlight this month:

• Dr. Hsin-Yun Lin, Postdoctoral Fellow, has been awarded a Medical Research Foundation Early Clinical Investigator Grant for her project titled “Targeting intrinsic and extrinsic pathways to overcome Ven+Aza resistance in AML.”
• Dr. John McClatchy, Postdoctoral Fellow, recently presented two talks:
  • A short talk at the 9th Annual Virtual RUNX1 Scientific Conference titled “TET2-mediated clonal hematopoiesis promotes fitness of RUNX1-FPD progenitors in murine models.”
  • A lightning talk at the Early Detection of Cancer Conference titled “Germline Runx1 mutations in cooperation with Tet2 loss-of-function promote the fitness and self-renewal of progenitors, dysregulating hematopoiesis via cell intrinsic and extrinsic mechanisms.”
• Dr. Aishwarya Sahasrabudhe, Postdoctoral Fellow, presented a flash talk and poster presentation at the ARTNet Bi-Annual Scientific Retreat titled “Delineating intrinsic and extrinsic mechanisms of venetoclax resistance in Acute Myeloid Leukemia using Genome-wide CRISPR Screen.”
• Luiza Ostrowski, computational biologist, presenter a short talk at the 9th Annual Virtual RUNX1 Scientific Conference titled "Deciphering RUNX1-FPD biology in the context of aging and clonal hematopoiesis using single-cell multi-omics.” 

Congratulations to Dr. Lisa Coussens who has been selected to receive the Metastasis Research Society's 2026 Women in Science Achievement Award! She will receive the award and give a lecture at the MRS Biennial Conference this summer.

Congratulations to Dr. Hatun Duran Cete, postdoc in the Schedin lab, whose abstract titled "Breast Cancer Liver Metastasis: Histopathologic Features at Primary and Metastatic Diagnoses” has been accepted for presentation at the Pathobiology for Investigators, Students, and Academicians (PISA) Young Investigators Virtual Meeting in October 2025.

Sarah Taylor (Maxson Lab) successfully defended her thesis. Congratulations, Dr. Taylor!

Congratulations to Miffy Guo, graduate student in the Brody lab and co-mentored by Dr. Robert Eil, was selected during AACR's Advances in Pancreatic Cancer Research special conference to give a talk in the closing plenary session on October 1st. She will be presenting "HuR drives immune evasion, metastases and KRAS addiction in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma: Implications for IO-based and KRAS inhibitor therapies."

Congratulations to Dr. Megan Ruhland who received an R01 for her proposal “Androgen receptor signaling and sex differences in anti-tumor dendritic cell function."

Recent publications

Dr. Jennifer Saultz and her lab in collaboration with a group of Knight investigators including Drs. Lind, Druker, Tyner, McWeeney, Fan, Chandra, and Kurtz, have had their publication  "The Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor is Associated with Monocytic AML and Innate Immune Resistance Reversible with an AHR inhibitor" provisionally accepted in Frontiers Immunology.

Dr. Kate Byrne and her lab have published "CD4+ T cells mediate MHC-deficient tumor rejection and endothelial cell reprogramming" in AACR's Cancer Immunology Research. The article is the featured spotlight on ACIR's website this week as well.

Margaret Haerr, graduate student, is co-first author on a paper accepted at Cancer Immunology Research from the Byrne lab entitled: CD4+ T cells mediate MHC-deficient tumor rejection and endothelial cell reprogramming, the paper includes fellow graduate students Yi Zhang, Jackie Phipps, and Maryam Al-Ghezi as co-authors.

Dr. Alex Nechiporuk and his lab published "Axon targeting of transcriptionally distinct pioneer neurons is regulated by retinoic acid signaling" in Nature Communications.

Dr. Eric Berens, postdoc in the Coussens lab, and his collaborators have had their paper, "Neoplastic immune mimicry potentiates breast tumor progression", accepted in Cancer Research.

View all CDCB news and recognitions.