The Lustgarten Foundation announced $22.8 million in new pancreatic cancer research funding for fiscal 2026 on Aug. 20, an $8.6 million increase over the prior year, spread across 18 projects. Four grants back clinical trials, two back AI-driven detection tools and the rest support early-detection biology, KRAS resistance and immunotherapy response work at more than a dozen institutions.
- Total: $22.8 million in fiscal 2026, up $8.6 million year over year, across 18 projects.
- Portfolio mix: of 62 active grants, 66% therapeutics, 20% personalized medicine, 14% early detection and interception.
- Clinical trials funded: four under the Dr. Robert F. Vizza Lustgarten Clinical Accelerator Initiative, at UNC, Mass General Brigham, Penn and NYU Langone.
- Cumulative: $333 million across 386 projects at 86 institutions since 1998.
- Coalition partners: The Mark Foundation, AACR, Break Through Cancer and Tina's Wish on early detection.
The four trials
Anirban Maitra, M.D., of NYU Langone Health's Perlmutter Cancer Center and Team iPACK will run "A First-in-Human Trial of Pancreatic Cancer Interception by Targeting Mutant KRAS," testing whether an oral KRAS inhibitor can safely treat KRAS-mutant precancerous pancreatic cysts before they become cancer. Ashwin Somasundaram, M.D., at the University of North Carolina, has a randomized Phase 2 comparing a KRAS G12D inhibitor plus erlotinib against gemcitabine and nab-paclitaxel in advanced basal-like pancreatic adenocarcinoma, with a test to identify the subtype up front. Harshabad Singh, MBBS, M.D., of Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute, will study the Fc-enhanced CTLA-4 antibody vilastobart with the PD-1 inhibitor retifanlimab in metastatic tumors carrying BRCA1, BRCA2 or PALB2 mutations. Mark O'Hara, M.D., at the University of Pennsylvania, will test whether a blood test can pick out untreated metastatic patients who benefit from adding sotigalimab to chemotherapy. A further grant to Mari Nakazawa, M.D., of Johns Hopkins Medicine funds PASS-02, a consortium for biomarker-driven trials in locally advanced disease that builds on PASS-01.
Detection grants, from KRAS neoantigens to Felix 2.0
Two awards come through the early-detection coalition the foundation formed with The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research, AACR, Break Through Cancer and Tina's Wish. Nikolaos Sgourakis, Ph.D., of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Penn, with Mark Sellmyer, M.D., Ph.D., and Possu Huang, Ph.D., of Stanford, will work on programmable recognition of KRAS neoantigens for early diagnosis across pancreatic, breast and ovarian cancers. Brian Wolpin, M.D., M.P.H., and Andrew Aguirre, M.D., Ph.D., of Dana-Farber, with Julie Sutcliffe, Ph.D., of UC Davis and Laura Wood, M.D., Ph.D., of Johns Hopkins, will develop a molecular imaging probe that recognizes KRAS-mutant tumor cells using small-molecule RAS(ON) inhibitors.
Three more detection grants go to Matthew Vander Heiden, M.D., Ph.D., at MIT on how early tumors alter pancreas function, David Ting, M.D., Ph.D., at Mass General Brigham on a blood test reading the humoral response to normally silent genetic elements, and Elliot Fishman, M.D., at Johns Hopkins for Felix 2.0, which applies AI image analysis to find small lesions on scans. Rebecca Snyder, M.D., M.P.H., and Heather Lyu, M.D., at MD Anderson received the LEAD grant for TrialScribe, an AI tool for trial matching.
Resistance, immune evasion and the LABS renewal
Gregory Beatty, M.D., Ph.D., at Penn will study why some tumors respond to immunotherapy and others resist it. Two AACR career development awards named for Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Robert Lewis go to Sandra Misale, Ph.D., at Johns Hopkins for HER2 targeting after KRAS-inhibitor resistance, and Dig B. Mahat, Ph.D., at Columbia for immune-cell enhancers that sustain immunosuppression. Seed grants fund Cosimo Commisso, Ph.D., at Sanford Burnham Prebys on hyperactivating macropinocytosis to kill tumor cells, and Jonathan Serody, M.D., at UNC Lineberger on metabolically enhanced CAR-T cells. The foundation renewed Reuben Shaw's LABS site at the Salk Institute and recommitted to the Conquering KRAS TeamLab it runs with Break Through Cancer, now in its fourth year.
"As the research community faces increasing uncertainty and funding challenges, the Foundation remains committed to protecting that progress by expanding our investment in the ideas, investigators, and collaborations that will carry these breakthroughs forward," said Linda Tantawi, the foundation's chief executive officer.
Why This Matters to the APO|APE Reader
Maitra's interception trial is the first to put a KRAS inhibitor in front of a precancerous cyst, and if it enrolls it will depend on cyst-fluid molecular testing to confirm the mutation before anyone is dosed. The Somasundaram and O'Hara studies both gate treatment on a subtype or blood assay, so three of the four funded trials are biomarker-selected by design. With 14% of the active portfolio in early detection against 66% in therapeutics, the foundation's own ratio shows where the field's money still sits.
