The Joy Cappel Young Investigator Award (JCYIA), given by Rockland Immunochemicals to support early career childhood cancer researchers, was awarded to two researchers in the form of a free-of-charge, custom, polyclonal antibody development project from Rockland. The two researchers were also recipients of Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation (ALSF) Young Investigator grants, a foundation that currently funds over 650 pediatric cancer research projects.

Abhinav Dey, Ph.D., who received the JCYIA in 2015, is researching personalized treatments for pediatric brain tumors. Asen Bagashev, Ph.D., who received the JCYIA this year, is researching targeted therapies for relapsed B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Both researchers received the ALSF grants at the ALSF Young Investigator Summit in Chicago in October.

In addition, Rockland is donating over $150,000 in reagents for the projects of ALSF Young Investigator and ‘A’ Award grantees with active grants.

The ALSF was named after Alexandra “Alex” Scott (1996­–2004), who began selling lemonade out of a stand in her front yard in Manchester, CT, to raise money for childhood cancer research. By the time of her death, she and others inspired by her had raised over $1 million.

The JCYIA, named in honor of former Rockland president and CEO Joy Cappel, is intended to foster research conducted by a promising post-doctoral fellow, graduate student, or young investigator performing research in the areas of oncology, nuclear signaling, developmental biology, epigenetics, immunology, microbiology, neuroscience, signal transduction, or stem cell technology.

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