New Kidney Cancer Immunotherapy Research Projects Funded
Two investigators recently received funding from the Cancer Research Institute (CRI) for research on improved immunotherapy approaches to treating kidney cancer. CRI awarded these investigators in addition to a joint Kidney Cancer Association-CRI award earmarked to fund a kidney cancer project.
Dr. David Braun, a medical oncologist and Assistant Professor of Medicine at the Yale School of Medicine, was named a 2025 Clinic and Laboratory Integration Program (CLIP) Investigator for research to develop antigen-directed therapies for renal cell carcinoma (RCC). By understanding the kidney tumor microenvironment and what kinds of immune cells are able to penetrate the tumor in order to have an anti-cancer effect, Braun hopes to design more precise immunotherapies to swiftly and effectively target cancer cells – research that could be translated from his lab into clinical trials for advanced kidney cancer patients soon.
Braun is also a past recipient of a Kidney Cancer Association Trailblazer Award for research on immunotherapy in chromophobe RCC, a less common type of kidney cancer that is particularly unresponsive to immunotherapies that would be effective in the most common type of kidney cancer – clear cell RCC – and this involved mapping the microenvironment of chromophobe-type kidney tumors.
Dr. Allison May is the other recipient of the CRI’s CLIP award for research to find biomarkers that identify and predict recurrence in particularly aggressive RCC cases that may also be particularly responsive to immunotherapy. May, a urologic oncologist and Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia, is a 2024 KCA Mentorship Academy participant.
In addition to the CRI’s independent CLIP awards, KCA partnered with CRI on a CLIP award to support cancer investigators researching immunotherapy approaches in kidney cancer. Dr. Sidi Chen received the joint KCA-CRI CLIP Investigator award for a novel mechanism to deliver anti-cancer drugs directly to kidney tumor cells.
The KCA was pleased to collaborate with CRI on the dedicated kidney cancer CLIP award to Chen and Braun’s and May’s CLIP awards are a welcome expansion of the kidney cancer immunotherapy research landscape.
CRI is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the field of cancer immunotherapy through rigorous scientific research and global collaboration. CRI’s mission is to create a world immune to cancer by driving scientific discovery, accelerating collaboration, and turning breakthroughs into life-saving treatments.