Grelet receives prestigious $1.8 million MERIT Award from NIH
Posted on September 3, 2025 by Carol McPhail
Simon Grelet, Ph.D., assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the Frederick P. Whiddon College of Medicine at the 麻豆直播, has received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) MERIT Award of $1.8 million for five years. The prestigious is designed to provide long-term funding support to investigators whose research competence and productivity are distinctly superior and who are highly likely to continue to perform in an outstanding manner.
Grelet鈥檚 award will support his research efforts to understand the contribution of the nervous system in promoting cancer progression, with a focus on the role of the nerve-cancer transfer of mitochondria in promoting cancer metastasis. He and his team will work to identify the key mediators involved in the transfers and assess the impact of inhibiting this process on cancer progression.
鈥淥ur project investigates how cancer-infiltrating nerves transfer their mitochondria to breast cancer cells, leading to increased metabolism of cancer cells, signaling changes, and dissemination of cancer cells to distal sites,鈥� said Grelet, who conducts research at the USA Health Mitchell Cancer Institute. 鈥淲e aim to uncover the underlying mechanisms and consequences of inhibiting these transfers to aid the future development of novel approaches that inhibit cancer metastasis.鈥�
Richard E. Honkanen, Ph.D., professor and chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Whiddon College of Medicine, called the award 鈥渁 tremendous honor.鈥�
Honkanen pointed out that researchers cannot apply for MERIT awards directly. Rather, an investigator must first submit an R01 grant application, and the NIH program staff and the National Advisory Board must jointly conclude that the researcher has demonstrated competence and productivity at a level distinctly superior to others, he said.
鈥淭o put this into perspective, securing an R01 grant from the National Cancer Institute at the NIH already requires ranking in the top 10% of all applications nationwide. Having that grant further recognized as distinctly superior places Dr. Grelet among the very best cancer researchers in the entire country,鈥� Honkanen said. 鈥淭his recognition is not only a profound honor for Dr. Grelet, but also for the department, the college, the Mitchell Cancer Institute and the 麻豆直播.
Grelet鈥檚 research into how cancer cells exploit their microenvironment, especially nearby nerve cells, to grow and spread was .
In that study, his team used innovative models to investigate how breast cancer cells interact with nerve cells and how that interaction contributes to cancer aggressiveness and metastasis. The researchers identified the metabolic dependencies on nerves through bioinformatic screenings, and further developed synthetic biology approaches, combined with flow cytometry and custom-coded tools to quantify the transfer of mitochondria between neurons and cancer cells in vivo. They found that mitochondria transferred from neurons helped cancer cells acquire metabolic plasticity, which enabled them to form distant metastases.
鈥淔ollowing closely from the recent publication of his paper in Nature, the NIH MERIT award is another fitting recognition of Dr. Grelet鈥檚 remarkable achievements to date,鈥� said Christopher Davies, Ph.D., associate dean for research at the Whiddon College of Medicine. 鈥淭his highly prestigious award, made only to a select group of investigators nationally, is a clear demonstration of the high regard in which Dr. Grelet is already held by his peers in cancer research and a reflection of their confidence that he is poised to transform our understanding of cancer aggressivity and metastasis.鈥�
Grelet established the Cancer Innervation and Neurobiology Laboratory at the Mitchell Cancer Institute in 2021 and is one of six investigators at the Whiddon College of Medicine who hold NIH MERIT Awards since the award鈥檚 creation by the NIH in 1986.