A little money goes a long way. A lot goes even further.

Just ask Harvey C. Cantor, professor of pathology at the Medical School and a researcher at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, who is getting his own national Method to Extend Research in Time (MERIT) award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

After 20 years of doing ground breaking immune system research, Cantor was awarded $5 million to study the immune system and find revolutionary treatments for cancer over the next eight to 10 years.

Robert F. Moore, a fund manager for NIH, says the MERIT award will allow Cantor to continue his research.

"It's a recommendation for past service and future potential," Moore says. "It's not a retirement gift."

The grant is remarkable because he will not have to reapply for funding every few years, Cantor says.

This also means that Cantor will be able to attract the brightest researchers to assist him, says Georg F. Weber, an immunologist working with Cantor.

"Who would not want to work in a lab of someone who has put themself in such an outstanding position?" Weber says.

The NIH gave a total of 51 Merit Awards in 1996, Moore says. Scientists are chosen carefully, going through several stages of scrutiny before final approval, he says. However, he says the grant is not a sure thing quite yet.

"Our entire government operates on a year-to-year basis," he says. "These are considered moral commitments, but they can be cut in a minute."

Cantor says he is "delighted" to have received his MERIT award, although he says he is unsure why his MERIT award came just now.

"Beats me," Cantor says. "I think it's just a reward for the fellows and students I have working with me."

Fans of Cantor say they think that NIH has chosen wisely--especially because he and his team of more than 15 researchers are on the cusp of developing a promising treatment for cancer.

"[The MERIT Award] is not quite where the Nobel Prize is but it's certainly well respected within the scientific community," Weber says.

According to Cantor, his team is trying to develop inhibiting peptides which can block the nefarious activities of osteopontin--a protein secreted by tumors.