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Four-time American Cancer Society grantee Dr. Pam Kreeger, Associate Professor in the Dept. of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, talked about she's leveraging ACS funding to bring her research on metastasis in ovarian cancer closer to benefiting patients.\n\n2:10 \u2013 On her four different ACS grants (a Postdoctoral Fellowship, Institutional Research Grant pilot award, Research Scholar Grant, and Mission Boost Grant) \u2013 \u201cI\u2019m not exaggerating when I say to people that I probably owe my career to ACS\u201d\n\n4:53 \u2013 On the science behind her Mission Boost Grant \u2013 \u201cIt builds from the Research Scholar Grant, where after about three years of work we decoded this mechanism where the macrophages in the ovarian cancer microenvironment can actually change the behavior of the mesothelial cells.\u201d\n\n6:10 \u2013 On why the Mission Boost Grant is a good fit \u201cThis isn\u2019t a great R01 project. It wouldn\u2019t be a great R01 project until you find the mechanism. You can\u2019t really propose to do all this pre-clinical and clinical modeling until you have a good mechanism, but then once that\u2019s where you\u2019re at that\u2019s not really enough to be an R01. And yet to propose a full clinical trial \u2013 we\u2019re not there yet either.\u201d\n\n9:20 \u2013 On curiosity and taking research to the next step \u2013 \u201c(If you) find something interesting as a basic scientist, it\u2019s not like there are people just waiting out there to take your idea to the next step. They have their own projects and their own favorite children to work on. So unless you are really willing to keep going with it, it\u2019s very easy for stuff to just fall off.\u201d\n\n13:20 \u2013 Advice she would give to someone applying for a Mission Boost Grant \u2013 \u201cWhat was incredibly helpful to me was having discussions with clinical collaborators, because in my mind I didn\u2019t see the steps between preclinical mouse study and full-blown trial in human patients that would mimic exactly that mouse study.\u201d\n\n15:45 \u2013 On how cancer touches everyone and how people can give back \u2013 \u201cI know as a researcher I benefit greatly from all the patients who consent to donate tissue\u2026It seems like a small thing\u2026but that\u2019s really what\u2019s going to allow us to move forward.\u201d