Washington Research Foundation (WRF) has awarded a $387,050 phase 3 technology commercialization grant to a team led by Derrick Hicks, Ph.D., a researcher in the Baker lab at the University of Washington’s (UW) Institute for Protein Design (IPD). WRF supported earlier work on this research with grants totaling $350,000 in 2022 and 2023.
Radiotherapies—using radiation to kill cancer cells in patients—are effective and important tools in our therapeutic arsenal against cancer. However, many existing radiotherapies unintentionally damage surrounding healthy cells. Radiolabeled antibodies, in which a radioactive atom is bound to an antibody designed to bind only with cancer cells, have helped increase the specificity of radiation exposure, but the large size of antibodies can prevent these therapeutics from penetrating the tumor microenvironment and reaching their targets. Furthermore, antibodies tend to circulate in the body for a long time, causing adverse effects in off-target regions when delivering toxic radiation.
