Lamassu Bio Inc. has been awarded a $2.05 million grant from the NIH and National Cancer Institute (NCI) for the development of SA-53 as a treatment for p53 wild-type sarcomas. SA-53 is designed to trigger the body’s natural defense mechanism p53 by blocking MDM2, a protein that deactivates p53 and contributes to treatment resistance.

If two recent reports about the NIH’s oversight of its grant programs were grades, the U.S. agency would have received failing marks – again.