Dr. Tjoson Tjoa, Chair of the Department of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, has been awarded funding through the Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center (CFCCC) Pilot Awards supported by the Anti-Cancer Challenge – 2025. Serving as co-principal investigator, Dr. Tjoa is part of a multidisciplinary team working to develop a spatial genomics-based platform to map neural-tumor interactions in head and neck cancer.

The project, titled “Establishing a Spatial-Genomics Based Cancer Neuroscience Platform to Map Neural-Tumor Interactions in Human Cancers,” was selected to receive $56,725 in funding. Led in collaboration with Xiangmin Xu, PhD, Chancellor’s Professor of Anatomy & Neurobiology and Director of the Center for Neural Circuit Mapping, the research aims to deepen our understanding of how nerves and tumors interact within the cancer microenvironment. The team hopes this pilot project will generate the foundational data needed to pursue future National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Cancer Institute (NCI) funding, further advancing innovative approaches to cancer research and treatment.