Bastyr University’s cancer research studies will advance well into the middle of the decade, thanks to a new grant the university received in partnership with the University of Washington. Bastyr was awarded $4.52 million over the next four years for the Bastyr/UW Oncomycology Translational Research Center, which will study the healing power of Asian medicinal mushrooms on breast and prostate cancer.

“This grant will fund rigorous studies relating to natural treatment of prostate and breast cancer,” said University President Daniel K. Church.

The funding comes from the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) and bolsters Bastyr’s already strong Research Institute, which has conducted more than 100 basic and clinical research studies in integrative, complementary and alternative medicine through the years.

Co-principal investigators on the grant are Leanna J. Standish from Bastyr and Mary L. (Nora) Disis of the Translational Medicine and Women’s Health and Tumor Vaccine Group at the University of Washington. Other collaborators include Celestia Higano, who directs the UW Prostate Cancer Clinical Research Group, and researchers with both the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the Developmental Center for Research in Complementary Alternative Medicine (DCRC) at the University of Minnesota.