Jamie Spangler, the William R. Brody Faculty Scholar and assistant professor in the departments of biomedical engineering and chemical and biomolecular engineering, and affiliate researcher at the Institute for NanoBioTechnology, 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.

Story by the Department of Biomedical Engineering.