“What this grant is designed to do is to take new therapies and discoveries from the lab to the patients who need them in the clinic and to raise the bar … to develop even better therapies for those who come after,” said Dr. Roy S. Herbst, chief of the medical oncology program at Smilow.

He emphasized that “my proudest thing about the program,” known as a Specialized Program of Research Excellence, is the team of 25 or so doctors and others who will focus on finding treatments for a disease “that kills 200,000 people a year in the United States.”