David Braun, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine (medical oncology and hematology) and a Louis Goodman and Alfred Gilman Yale Scholar, and Sidi Chen, PhD, associate professor of genetics and of neurosurgery, have been awarded 2025 Clinic & Laboratory Integration Program (CLIP) and Technology Impact Awards from the Cancer Research Institute (CRI). These awards provide funding to address the gap between technology development and clinical application of cancer immunotherapies.
Braun has a longstanding interest in integrating experimental and computational approaches to biomedical research and is currently studying mechanisms of response and resistance to immune therapy in kidney cancer, with the goal of developing novel therapies. His project “Development of antigen-directed therapies for renal cell carcinoma” aims to design smarter, more precise immunotherapies that steer the immune system directly toward cancer cells.
Chen’s research focuses on providing a global understanding of biological systems and development of novel breakthrough therapeutics, and he leads a research group seeking global understanding of the molecular and cellular factors controlling disease progression and immunity. His project, “Initial development of CAR-T-drug conjugate against solid tumor and application in kidney cancer” is taking a new approach to CAR T-cell therapy and doubling the number of ways in which it can fight against late-stage kidney cancer. If successful, this innovative approach could bring the power of CAR T-cell therapy to solid tumors and change the game for patients with difficult-to-treat kidney cancer.
The goal of the CLIP and Technology Impact Awards is to advance technologies that can speed up the entire field’s efforts in addressing one of the most defining challenges of our time—developing immunotherapies that are effective for all cancer patients. The CRI was founded in 1953 and is a non-profit organization funding cancer research to develop immunologically-based treatments.