Our 2025 Give to Cure Cancer Year-End Appeal is now underway. Your generosity can make this our most impactful year yet. Thanks to supporters like you, AFCR-supported research achieved remarkable progress in 2025.
We are proud to share a few of this year’s most exciting breakthroughs:
- First-in-class HuR degrader enters first human testing: AFCR-supported research is advancing a novel therapy that directs cancer cells to tag and degrade HuR, an RNA-binding protein many tumors rely on. The FDA cleared the first human study in January 2025; a Phase 1 trial is initiating in 2025 to evaluate safety, dosing, and early anti-tumor activity in solid tumors. The study will also track pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics and exploratory biomarkers of HuR pathway suppression to inform next-step trials.
- Botanical therapy improves outcomes in HBV-related liver cancer: AFCR-supported work on a botanical cancer drug platform continues to advance. In HBV-positive hepatocellular carcinoma, adding the standardized botanical therapy to standard treatment has shown improved survival and tumor control in a randomized Phase 2b study, with promising tolerability. These findings support the potential synergy between carefully developed botanical formulations and conventional cancer therapies.
- GI-cancer “connector” immunotherapy enters early trials: AFCR-supported work pushes a modular immunotherapy concept forward: a bispecific “connector” that helps T cells latch onto tumor antigens common in gastrointestinal cancers. This T-cell – redirecting therapy is in Phase 1 with sites in Australia and Hong Kong, using dose-escalation followed by expansion cohorts to assess safety, pharmacokinetics, and early signs of efficacy in gastric and colorectal cancers.
- 2025 Young Investigator Awards: AFCR is investing in future leaders. The 2025 USCACA–AFCR Young Investigator Awards provide funding to promising early-career scientists whose bench discoveries are already being translated into treatments. These catalytic grants help researchers generate pivotal data, compete for larger awards, and accelerate ideas into the clinic, building the next wave of breakthroughs.
Together, these projects bring us closer to earlier detection and better treatments. Your support fuels the breakthroughs that patients and families are counting on.
Join us by giving to the 2025 Give to Cure Cancer Year-End Appeal today. Your gift makes a real difference – and the advances you help fund could soon help you or someone you love.
Thank you for your renewed support.
