September 2026 Newsletter

As we enter September, I am incredibly proud to share the announcement of ICRF's newest round of cancer research grants. September is also a powerful reminder of why this work matters, with the month raising awareness for several forms of cancer, including childhood, blood, ovarian, prostate, thyroid, and gynecologic cancers.

ICRF is proud to announce $5.35 million in new grants for 2026 to 2027, supporting 38 innovative cancer research projects led by scientists across Israel. The new awards bring ICRF’s lifetime investment to nearly $109 million across more than 3,000 cancer research grants since 1975, advancing bold approaches to prevention, detection, diagnosis, and treatment.

September marks both Childhood Cancer and Blood Cancer Awareness Month. ICRF-funded researcher Prof. Shai Izraeli and his team developed DAISY-MRD, a new sequencing method for AML that can detect tiny amounts of disease remaining after treatment, potentially helping identify children at higher risk of relapse and improve monitoring of treatment response.

Prof. Grossman, a newly awarded ICRF grantee at Rambam Health Care Campus discusses a new approach to monitoring glioblastoma and understanding how tumors respond to treatment. Her ICRF-funded research uses MRI-guided focused ultrasound and blood-based biomarkers to track biological changes in the tumor over time, with the goal of advancing more personalized treatment for patients.

Prof. Aaron Ciechanover and his team at the Technion are studying lymphoma and multiple myeloma, exploring PROTACs, a promising new class of cancer treatments designed to target and destroy proteins cancer cells need to survive. This approach could help slow cancer growth, overcome treatment resistance, and offer new possibilities for treating these blood cancers.

Former ICRF grantee and current International Scientific Council member Prof. Howard Cedar and colleagues at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have discovered that aging occurs unevenly across individual cells. Their findings, published in Nature Communications, identify a molecular aging signature that could open new avenues for understanding cancer, aging, and other diseases.

ICRF grantees regularly publish research advancements that move the field forward. Prof. Rony Dahan and his team at the Weizmann Institute identified a way to enhance an emerging immunotherapy approach. Prof. Keren Yitzhak and colleagues at the Technion developed a machine-learning tool to identify expanding T cells in tumors, helping to better understand immune responses across cancers.

This September, ICRF supporters will come together at two golf outings to help advance cancer research. From the ICRF Rolfe Drive Fore Research Golf Classic in Skokie, IL on Sept. 14 to our Sandy Herzfeld Memorial Golf Outing in Scarsdale, NY on Sept. 28, these events bring our supporters together around a shared goal: creating more breakthroughs for people facing cancer.