SIR Foundation Awards $1.5 Million in Special Research Grants for Interventional Radiology Therapies

December 14, 2022—The Society of Interventional Radiology (SIR) Foundation recently announced it has awarded $1.5 million in grant funding to four projects exploring embolization and interventional oncology research.

According to the SIR Foundation, the funding supports high-impact interventional radiology (IR) research that will further knowledge of existing IR therapies or lead to breakthrough IR therapies that improve patient outcomes. The studies were selected through a competitive review process.

The first two awards fund research using structured reporting and registry-based approaches. The second two awards fund early and conceptual-stage IR research projects that are multispecialty.

The following are the studies and their investigators:

• Correlations of Y-90 Tumor Absorbed Dose to Histopathologic Changes and Local Tumor Control; Constantinos T. Sofocleous, MD, with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, New York
• Development of a Novel Humanized Patient-derived Xenograft Model of Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC) for Interventional Oncology (IO); Terence Gade, MD, with the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• Prospective, Multicentric Registry of Pulmonary Arteriovenous Malformation (AVM) Embolization; Clifford R. Weiss, MD, with Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland
• Genetic Subtyping to Enable Precision-guided Interventions for Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC); Gregory J. Nadolski, MD, with the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

SIR Foundation Chair Theresa M. Caridi, MD, commented in the press release, “Data supporting IR therapies are essential for expanding patient access to IR and through this special grant funding these exemplary studies will help to achieve that goal. SIR Foundation is grateful for the support of our donors and corporate partners, which allows us to meet our mission to foster IR research and help our members care for their patients.” Dr. Caridi is Associate Professor and Division Director of IR at the University of Alabama at Birmingham in Birmingham, Alabama.