RICHMOND, Va. – Sept. 9, 2026 – Researchers at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center were recently awarded a $2.5 million R01 grant from the National Cancer Institute. The five-year grant will allow Massey to evaluate the efficacy of TROP2 targeted antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) to further enhance therapeutic benefits in both breast and pancreatic cancer care.
Massey researchers, led by principal investigator Chuck Harrell, Ph.D., member of the Cancer Biology research program at Massey and professor in the Department of Pathology at the VCU School of Medicine, will look to define what enables responses and resistance to ADCs in order to identify predictive biomarkers and establish therapeutic strategies to optimize TROP2-targeted ADC efficacy in both triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC).
Researchers have previously demonstrated that sacituzumab govitecan (SG), an FDA-approved TROP2-directed ADC, shows substantial activity in treating TNBC and has been given Orphan Drug Designation for PDAC studies.
What are Massey’s goals with this grant?
“We hope to develop a mechanism where we can predict a patient’s drug response before even starting them down a treatment path,” said Harrell, who is also an assistant professor in the VCU School of Medicine. “We could develop a test to tell the patient ‘You don’t need this drug, but you definitely want to take this one.’”
“Additionally, if a patient isn’t cured from the initial drug treatment, we should be able to tell them a secondary drug they should immediately be treated with. We hope that the ADCs we create through this study can be used next if and when a tumor becomes resistant to the original ADC.”
How will Massey researchers look to achieve those goals?
Why does this grant matter?
Co-Investigators on the grant are:
Additional VCU collaborators on this research include :