"I am honored to be one of the first grantees of the Sontag Foundation. Upon receiving the award, I quickly found the benefits went far beyond just getting financial support for my new lab. The Sontag Foundation has helped me navigate life and career, has expanded my world of scientific colleagues, and introduced many new friends."

About DSA-Funded Research

Dr. Chenn has published over 40 peer-reviewed publications including cover articles in the journals Cell, Science, and Developmental Biology. He formerly served as the director of clinical pathology at the University of Illinois Hospital in Chicago, where he established a new program for Personalized Diagnostics, also known as the Laboratory for Innovative Care and Research. Under his leadership, that program launched several efforts to support patient care decisions, including research to identify genetic variations in cancer that predicted responses to specific therapeutic approaches and the development of clinical diagnostic tests from gene expression signatures. Dr. Chenn's Sontag research project proposed further studies to try to understand how beta catenin regulates cell growth and cell death. By examining how normal brain cells develop and how abnormalities in development can lead to uncontrolled growth, they hoped to gain further valuable insight onto the causes of brain cancer.