Jamie Spangler, the William R. Brody Faculty Scholar and assistant professor in the departments of biomedical engineering and chemical and biomolecular engineering, is the recipient of a 2024 Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award to continue a multi-year project aimed at developing new immunotherapy approaches.
Funded by the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, these awards support “high-risk, high-reward” ideas with the potential to significantly impact the prevention, diagnosis, or treatment of cancer. Spangler is receiving an additional $400,000 “Stage 2” award after being granted the initial Stage 1 award in 2022. Stage 2 funding is reserved for the awardees who have demonstrated impressive progress on their research during the first two years of the award.
Spangler’s project, called “Engineering multispecific down-regulating antibodies to advance cancer immunotherapy,” looks to develop a class of antibody therapeutics that target cancer-promoting pathways in a way that is different from current immunotherapies, with a goal of benefitting many more patients.