How One Funder Is Bringing Greater Diversity to Cancer Research Labs

PHOTO: GORODENKOFF/SHUTTERSTOCK

In an era when racism is being increasingly called out, one area that doesn’t make the front page so often is academia, specifically scientific research, where African Americans are significantly underrepresented. One funder is addressing this disparity in a field of research that has serious implications for people of all races: cancer research.

Systemic racism has historically been a problem in academia, just as it has in other professions. Recent articles in Nature and the Harvard Business Review, to name just a couple, discuss the effects of racism past and present in the academic research community. From HBR:

The racial/ethnic disparities in rates of infections and deaths from COVID-19 exposes these long-standing systemic injustices in scientific research, health care, and medicine. Biases are prevalent across all industries and institutions, including scientific ones. Unless scientists and scientific institutions change course—unless science recognizes how past racist scholarship continues to inform present research, and unless it directly addresses racism within its institutions—scientists will fail to ensure the health and well-being of large populations of people.

Some 13% of the U.S. population is African American, but Black researchers account for only 2% of oncology researchers. That’s not just bad for the Black scientists and students seeking careers in academia, it’s bad for science, for a couple of important reasons.

For one, most health and cancer research has historically involved white populations, and while advances have benefited everyone, there remain differences and disparities in cancer among African Americans. Not enough has been done in the laboratories to understand why those differences occur and how to address them; Black researchers may focus more on these questions.

Another reason is that the entire field of cancer research—and by extension, society—has been missing out on innovative African American researchers because they haven’t had the professional opportunities or funding to run their own labs and explore their ideas. One study published in 2020 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that minority Ph.D. students in the sciences innovate at a higher rate than majority students, but that their contributions are discounted and less likely to earn them academic positions and the opportunities necessary to advance their research.

The V Foundation for Cancer Research has begun to address these racial disparities in cancer science through a new initiative to support early-career African American researchers. The foundation was established in 1993 by ESPN and the late Jim Valvano, a famed basketball coach for North Carolina State University and ESPN commentator who died at age 47 from metastatic adenocarcinoma. The organization raises money from foundations, individuals, and events; donors provided an endowment that covers administrative costs, enabling V Foundation to put 100% of direct donations toward research and its programs. It has made about $260 million in grants for cancer research since its inception, much of it to support innovative research and translational research—studies that focus on turning laboratory research into real-world treatments. Another focus is its V Scholar Grants.

“The scholar grants are typically for younger investigators just starting their labs with fresh new ideas,” said Katie Sweet, senior manager of communications for V Foundation. The foundation has awarded about $10 million in V Scholar grants in the past year, a total Sweet said was somewhat reduced due to COVID-19. “But we continue to grow and look forward to definitely funding more research as we move out of the pandemic.”

Recently, the foundation announced the creation of a new category of its V Scholar grants, coming from its Stuart Scott Memorial Cancer Research Fund. It gave eight grants specifically intended to support early-career tenure-track African American researchers. Longtime V Foundation supporter Bristol Myers Squibb aided the initiative, contributing $1 million to fund five of the grants.

Funding from private philanthropic sources for science and health research can make a huge difference to a scientist in academia, but the potentially much larger sums from public sources—such as the NIH—are what keep the lights on in the laboratories and the careers of researchers progressing. The NIH has also acknowledged the racial gap in its own funding, and in the last few years, has begun to implement measures to close the diversity gap; it has reported some progress. But the statistic above—that Black researchers make up only 2% of oncology researchers—suggests there’s plenty of opportunity for philanthropy to do more to support the representation of Black scientists in health research.