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| The Grelet lab team, from left, Andrew Parton, undergraduate biology student; Shila Gilbert, lab technician and manager; Simon Grelet, Ph.D., assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology; Lizzy Davis, biomedical sciences graduate student; and Greg Hoover, lab technician. |
Simon Grelet, Ph.D., assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the Frederick P. Whiddon College of Medicine at the University of South Alabama, has received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) MERIT Award. The prestigious R37 grant is designed to provide long-term funding support to investigators whose research competence and productivity are distinctly superior and who are highly likely to continue to perform in an outstanding manner.
Grelet’s award will support his research efforts to understand the contribution of the nervous system in promoting cancer progression, with a focus on the role of the nerve-cancer transfer of mitochondria in promoting cancer metastasis. He and his team will work to identify the key mediators involved in the transfers and assess the impact of inhibiting this process on cancer progression.
“Our project investigates how cancer-infiltrating nerves transfer their mitochondria to breast cancer cells, leading to increased metabolism of cancer cells, signaling changes, and dissemination of cancer cells to distal sites,” said Grelet, who conducts research at the USA Health Mitchell Cancer Institute. “We aim to uncover the underlying mechanisms and consequences of inhibiting these transfers to aid the future development of novel approaches that inhibit cancer metastasis.”
Richard E. Honkanen, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Whiddon College of Medicine, called the award “a tremendous honor.”
Honkanen pointed out that researchers cannot apply for MERIT awards directly. Rather, an investigator must first submit an R01 grant application, and the NIH program staff and the National Advisory Board must jointly conclude that the researcher has demonstrated competence and productivity at a level distinctly superior to others, he said.
“To put this into perspective, securing an R01 grant from the National Cancer Institute at the NIH already requires ranking in the top 10% of all applications nationwide. Having that grant further recognized as distinctly superior places Dr. Grelet among the very best cancer researchers in the entire country,” Honkanen said. “This recognition is not only a profound honor for Dr. Grelet, but also for the department, the college, the Mitchell Cancer Institute and the University of South Alabama.
Grelet’s research into how cancer cells exploit their microenvironment, especially nearby nerve cells, to grow and spread was published this summer in the scientific journal Nature.
“Following closely from the recent publication of his paper in Nature, the NIH MERIT award is another fitting recognition of Dr. Grelet’s remarkable achievements to date,” said Christopher Davies, Ph.D., associate dean for research at the Whiddon College of Medicine. “This highly prestigious award, made only to a select group of investigators nationally, is a clear demonstration of the high regard in which Dr. Grelet is already held by his peers in cancer research and a reflection of their confidence that he is poised to transform our understanding of cancer aggressivity and metastasis.”
Grelet established the Cancer Innervation and Neurobiology Laboratory at the Mitchell Cancer Institute in 2021 and is one of six investigators at the Whiddon College of Medicine who hold NIH MERIT Awards since the award’s creation by the NIH in 1986.
