PROJECT SUMMARY – DEVELOPMENTAL FUNDS The strategic allocation of Developmental Funds has played an indispensable role in advancing the mission of the Cancer Center and its societal impact during the last Cancer Center Support Grant (CCSG) budget period. Allocated through a consultative and transparent process that proactively engages all Cancer Center stakeholders, Developmental Funds fulfill two key Cancer Center goals: (i) support thematic faculty recruitment in Cancer Center priority areas; and (ii) enable innovative pilot projects for transdisciplinary and multi-investigator collaboration. First, Developmental Funds allocated during the last five years supported the recruitment of new Cancer Center leaders, Liang (co-Leader, Molecular and Cellular Oncogenesis Program) and Tian (co-Leader, Genome Regulation and Cell Signaling Program), as well as Cancer Center members in priority areas of cancer computational biology, bioinformatics and machine learning (Auslander, Srivastava), viral oncogenesis and innate immune signaling (Price, Tempera), and the immune tumor microenvironment and associated therapeutic vulnerabilities (Bertolini, Zhang, Veglia). Second, innovative pilot projects supported by Developmental Funds led to three, multi-institutional program project grants in Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV)-driven epithelial malignancies (PI, Lieberman, P01 CA269043-funded); personalized therapy of high-grade serous ovarian cancer (PI, Murphy; P01 CA288279-under review); and plasticity of therapy-induced neuroendocrine prostate cancer (PI, Languino; P01 CA298993-under review). As hallmark of the Wistar Cancer Center, Developmental Funds expanded the trans-institutional partnership with the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center (HFGCC), supporting new tumor-type- specific collaborations in non-small cell lung cancer, melanoma, and ovarian cancer, and a new, joint initiative in population health science and breast cancer risk. In aggregate, the return-on-investment of Developmental