Passion and urgency: UVA scientist awarded $5.5 million federal grant for cutting-edge breast cancer research

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WRIC) -- The U.S. Department of Defense selected a University of Virginia (UVA) scientist — out of candidates all across the country — to receive $5.5 million in breast cancer research funding as part of the Era of Hope Scholar Award.

8News spoke with the esteemed researcher, Natasha Sheybani, to learn more about what this grant money will go to and why her work is so special.

"Really, the passion is mostly, hopefully, a well-placed sense of urgency," Sheybani said.

Beginning her PhD at just 19 years old and becoming a UVA faculty member at around the age of 24, Sheybani has felt a call to urgency her whole life. One realm of research in particular captured her attention.

"Unfortunately, the incidence of breast cancer is rising among younger women, so much so that the prescribed age for, like, screening just dropped by a decade," Sheybani said when asked about a rising rate of breast cancer among young women.

Recently, the Trump administration has made significant nationwide slashes in research funding. So it is notable that the federal Department of Defense hand-picked Sheybani and her cutting-edge research as a priority.

Sheybani's groundbreaking research looks at how "focused sound waves" could improve the body's immune system's ability to fight breast cancer.

"We're talking about projecting sound waves into the body through completely intact tissue," Sheybani said. "So it's a non-surgical procedure. It's something that we can do without incurring more risk, which I kind of directly contrast with some of our other cancer mainstays like radiation or chemotherapy, which many of us know to be highly effective but unfortunately toxic."

The expert elaborated on the complex work.

"When you project these sound waves into the body, there are these really interesting and unique ways that they basically stimulate the immune system and we're trying to actually harness this in the context of cancer to basically make cancers more recognizable to the immune system," Sheybani said.

The award-winning scientist called the work both exciting and bold. She said this grant money allows her lab to dream big -- lighting the fire under her bold vision to re-imagine long-term cancer survivorship. Again, researchers all across the country applied for this grant last year.

"I have a genuine enthusiasm for not just the work that we do, but really the very human goals that underscore the work that we do every day," Sheybani said. "As scientists, I think it's very easy for us to sort of, you know, stay rooted within the granularity of what we're doing, but when we step back out into the broader landscape of things, it's really about making tangible human impact."

Sheybani told 8News that she is honored to have a team of women by her side in her lab — this includes people who survived breast cancer themselves and -- therefore -- have experienced treatments firsthand.

The grant money officially goes into effect in Sept. 2025, and Sheybani said her team is ready to hit the ground running.