The Masonic Samaritan Fund is the Freemasons’ health and care charity and the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research was one of 13 medical charities nominated to receive the funds in a poll of Freemasons.
Colin Goding’s project is following up on the findings that the TFEB gene affects the ability of non-melanoma cancer cells to spread throughout the body and that altering the activity of the TFEB gene can reverse symptoms of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Huntington’s diseases in mouse models of these diseases. He now plans to search through 6000 drugs already approved for clinical use to identify those that control TFEB activity. Identifying such drugs that are already being used for other purposes will enable more rapid clinical application in cancer and neurodegeneration than traditional searches for novel drugs with unknown safety records.