Information about the Dr. Ernest J. Ring Academic Development Grant.
In 2018, Rahul Sheth, MD, was awarded the SIR Foundation Dr. Ernest J. Ring Academic Development Grant to further his research in evaluating the efficacy of a minimally invasive hyperthermia technique in the treatment of hepatocellular carcinomas. Based at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Dr. Sheth continues to work on finding new ways to induce hyperthermia in cancer cells with the end goal of immune activation—not just on localized tumors, but on cancer cells throughout the body as well.
The Ring Grant, which awards up to $150,000 over 2 years for junior interventional radiology faculty members, allowed Dr. Sheth to collect data, conduct multiple research projects and secure additional grants.
Can you tell us a little bit about your research?
Rahul Sheth, MD: Through my work at MD Anderson, I’ve seen that immunotherapy has really come to the forefront of cancer therapy, and it has revolutionized the care of cancers across the entire spectrum of oncology. For some patients, these drugs work miracles and they go from a Stage four disease to being completely cured. Unfortunately, that’s a minority of patients. Most patients don’t, in fact, have any benefit from it.
When patients receive these immunotherapy drugs, they work by telling the body’s immune system to attack the cancer cell and ignore all the signals the cancer cell is giving to shut down. Typically, the immune cells listen to the cancer cells and don’t attack—so these drugs help teach the immune cells to overcome that. But they can’t overcome every barrier that the cancer cells throw out, which is why most of the time the immune system still doesn’t attack the cancer, even with the immunotherapy drugs on board.
We know the potential for this therapy is there, but a major need in oncology research is how to expand the efficacy across the entire patient population for any given cancer type. As IRs, we have the ability to do various procedures on the tumor to help lower those barriers, such as specific types of local therapies to the cancer cells so they no longer can suppress the immune system. Then, when you administer immunotherapy, the immune cells can attack and eradicate the cancer cells. In addition, the immune cells can then potentially learn to recognize the cancer cell and essentially spread the word and kill tumor cells throughout the body.
That is the holy grail for a lot of immunology research. The cool thing about IR is that we’re well positioned to be the ones who deliver that magic potion right into the heart of the tumor so that patients can activate the immune response.
How did the Ring Grant impact your research?
RS: The Ring Grant was pivotal. At the time, I was a new junior faculty member at MD Anderson. I always knew I wanted to do this type of translational research, and the challenge is finding the time and the funding to do it. Small grants like the Pilot Grant, which SIR Foundation was very generous to support me with, are great for getting a little bit of data, but they don’t always provide the time to step back and invest yourself in a big-picture, long-term project. That’s what the SIR Foundation Ring Grant provided: It allowed me the time and the resources to invest what I needed to take that big step into a large, long-term project, which can lead to a career-size grant.
Have you been able to gain additional funding since receiving the Ring Grant?
RS: Yes. I was able to use the data from the Ring Grant to successfully get an R21 grant from the National Institutes of Health. That is a 3-year, $500,000 grant, which we have recently been able to turn into an R01, which is a 5-year, $2.5 million grant.
The SIR Foundation 2023 grant cycle.
Because the Ring Grant is a competitive source of funding, what recommendations would you have to other IRs who may want to apply for it?
RS: The first thing is that I just encourage people to apply. I feel that the first hurdle to research is mental—people don’t know what it takes to receive a grant, or there is a mystique around what a grant is and how to write one—and I think people can psych themselves out about the entire process.
My second recommendation is to ask for advice often. I now sit on review panels, and you can almost immediately put each grant application into one of two buckets: whether someone who knew what they were doing helped write the grant, or whether the author just winged it. The former is going to have a much better chance of getting funded.
The goal of the Ring Grant is to help you gain access to something like NIH funding, so reviewers want to see some degree of self-awareness from the applicant when they’re making their Ring Grant. If they know to seek help with that first grant, you can trust they will know the path to writing a larger grant. So, my main advice is to find someone who can show you the ropes. There are plenty of us out there who are happy to help young researchers.
Has your research scope expanded since you were awarded the Ring Grant?
RS: Absolutely. Part of the benefit the Ring Grant afforded me was time and space to gain additional grants. When that happens, you are no longer forced to focus on just one project, and you have a bit of wiggle room to think more broadly.
My initial project led to other ideas and hypotheses which led to the R01 grant. The R01 is not a copy/paste from the Ring Grant; it evolved from the time and knowledge gained from the Ring Grant. It’s helpful, because you see things every day in the procedure room and in clinic that you may not understand or are curious to learn more about. As a result, in the lab we’re studying two or three vastly different topics, from immunology to tumor biology to thrombosis. That comes from having the time to get your feet planted in the lab and branch out and explore those questions you come across.
Are there any additional opportunities you would encourage young researchers to explore?
RS: Clinical research is fantastic, and we need to encourage more IR researchers to pursue it. But I would also encourage people to embrace the curiosity that may have originally driven them to medicine in the first place and apply it in the translational setting. That’s where you can explore ideas in ways that you could never do clinically. I really encourage folks to be creative and think broadly and consider the opportunities of translational research in addition to their clinical research.
Learn more about the Dr. Ernest J. Ring Academic Development Grant at sirfoundation.org/get-funded/grants/ernest-ring-grant.