The Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute Team Science Award supports new cancer-focused research between Cancer Institute members. The funding supports multi-PI teams pursuing new avenues of cancer research that will accelerate the collection of data for NCI grant submissions and cancer-relevant publications. Dr. Adam Wolfe, Assistant Professor in Radiation Oncology, and co-investigators Drs. Isabelle Racine Miousse and Nükhet Aykin-Burns were awarded one of the 2022 Team Science Awards for the project “Synergizing methionine restriction with radiation therapy in KRAS mutant rectal cancer.” This project studies the disease of colorectal cancer which is the third most common cancer and is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. KRAS is mutated in half of all colorectal cancers, and these mutations are associated with resistance to treatment. Their proposal studies a novel mechanism to decrease the dietary intake of the essential amino acid methionine to re-sensitize rectal tumors to external beam radiation therapy (EBRT) while protecting the healthy tissue of the gastrointestinal tract. Locally advanced rectal cancer is treated with a combination of chemotherapy and radiotherapy before surgery to reduce the tumor size and to prevent local recurrences. However, KRAS mutant tumors are poorly responsive to radiation. Radiation and chemotherapy are associated with normal tissue toxicities that are dose-limiting and can impact the quality of life for many years in patients with late-stage rectal adenocarcinoma who are more likely to be from low socioeconomic status and members of minorities. Our diet modification proposal can improve cancer outcomes in these hard-to-treat patients and reduce toxicities related to cancer therapy and is a novel strategy to be tested in clinical trials.