Buffalo, New York City, USA: Buffalo Scientist Receives $2.1 Million NIH Grant to Study Disease Mechanisms

A four-year award will fund investigations into how biomolecular condensates affect illnesses like ALS and cancer.

Priya R. Banerjee, a biophysicist at the University at Buffalo and of Indian descent, has secured a $2.1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to advance his studies on biomolecular condensates — dynamic, liquid-like structures formed by proteins and RNA that are critical for cellular processes and disease progression.

The grant, known as the Maximising Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA), is offered through the NIH’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences. It builds on Banerjee’s earlier five-year MIRA award granted in 2020. With this new funding, he will continue to investigate how protein and RNA condensates behave differently in normal cells compared with diseased cells, focusing specifically on disorders such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and various forms of cancer.