Funding supports a promising antibody treatment for diffuse midline gliomas, a fatal childhood brain cancer with few treatment options
Seattle, WA – March 17. 2026
Washington Research Foundation (WRF) has awarded $250,000 to Jim Olson, M.D., Ph.D., and Andrew (Drew) Mhyre, Ph.D., of Seattle Children’s Research Institute (SCRI) to continue developing an antibody therapy for diffuse midline gliomas (DMGs) and other devastating brain tumors. DMG is a fatal diagnosis that affects children 6 to 12 years old. Patients tend to have few treatment options and only a 9- to 12-month life expectancy. Related brain cancers in adults, whether a primary tumor or metastatic disease, are often similarly fatal. The WRF Phase 2 technology commercialization grant to support this work follows earlier Phase 1 funding in 2024, bringing WRF’s total support for the project to $350,000.
The grant comes from WRF’s $12.5 million, five-year pledge to SCRI’s Invent at Seattle Children’s Postdoctoral Scholars Program (Invent), which was launched in 2022 to train early-career scientists and accelerate the development of novel therapeutics for childhood diseases.
The Olson team, co-led by Mhyre, a senior research scientist and senior director of discovery and pharmacology at SCRI, and Emily Girard, a staff scientist, is taking an approach to treating DMGs that hijacks cancer cells’ own behavior by flipping their evasion mechanism into a vulnerability. The antibody therapy is a bispecific T cell engager (TCE) that works in part by targeting an immune checkpoint protein called PD-L1 (programmed death ligand 1) on the cancer cells. In normal physiology, PD-L1 acts as a brake on the immune system, attaching to receptors on T cells to keep them from becoming overactive. But tumors exploit this mechanism by overexpressing PD-L1, dampening T cells’ ability to fight the cancer. The TCE developed at SCRI targets this overexpression, with one arm of the TCE binding to the PD-L1 on the tumor and the other arm binding to a protein complex called CD3 on T cells, engaging them to attack cancer cells. The combination of these two processes acts as a molecular bridge to get T cells into close contact with tumors to fight them effectively.
In the last decade, researchers have shown TCEs to be effective in treating a variety of blood cancers but have made little progress against solid tumors. One limitation that has hindered the clinical utility of these TCEs is that most use an older CD3 binder that causes cytokine toxicity. Mhyre and Olson developed their initial PD-L1 TCE with one of these older CD3 binders. While that version produced promising data, the team recently switched to a new CD3 binder that has proven to be safer and more effective.
“The Phase 1 funding showed that doses of the initial TCE required to provide an exceptional survival advantage in preclinical models were safe in advanced toxicology studies,” said Olson, Invent’s program director and a principal investigator at the SCRI lab in which Mhyre and Girard work. “In Phase 2, we attempt to further widen the therapeutic window by using a new CD3 binder that appears to be much safer than the previous version. In the absence of funding to properly test the new version, many groups would have forged ahead with the original molecule, and we believe the new one will be safer and more effective for kids and adults with brain tumors.”
WRF’s multi-phase Technology Commercialization Grants program has also benefited the researchers by providing funding continuity over multiple years, including the ability to secure additional funding in between the two WRF awards.
“Getting across that chasm between what we can get funding for—which is basic discovery—and how you get those ideas into development, and the steps that actually get it into the clinic, is very difficult and expensive,” said Mhyre.
This chasm is sometimes called the “valley of death,” a notoriously challenging period in translational science between proof of concept and clinical trials.
“Completing the Phase 1 project allowed us to secure additional funding from an organization called Critical Path Institute,” said Mhyre. “Those funds were used to establish the manufacturability and safety of our original molecule on the development path towards clinical trials.” Critical Path Institute (C-Path) offers a Translational Therapeutics Accelerator (TRxA) that “is designed to help promising programs bridge key inflection points,” said TRxA Executive Director Maaike Everts, Ph.D. “What stood out to us about Drew’s work was his determination to take on one of the toughest challenges in oncology with both scientific rigor and urgency. It’s incredibly rewarding to see this work continue to gain momentum through WRF’s Phase 2 support. We’re excited to see the program advance toward clinical readiness in the years ahead.”
WRF’s director of grant programs, Meher Antia, Ph.D., said, “We are extremely supportive of Jim and Drew’s decision to move forward with safety studies using their novel CD3 binder. That approach aligns with WRF’s philosophy of using strong science and data to guide decisions in therapeutic development. The Phase 2 funding will enable the team to bring the best possible solution to the clinic for a cancer with a huge unmet need.”
The latest funding will support the optimization of their next generation TCE for manufacturing, along with toxicity studies in non-human primates. This will ensure that any therapy that makes it to clinical trials will be safe for patients at effective treatment doses. If the studies are successful, the team hopes to file an investigational new drug (IND) application in 2027 with phase one clinical trials in humans to follow.
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About Washington Research Foundation:
Washington Research Foundation (WRF) supports research, scholarship and entrepreneurship in Washington state, with a focus on life sciences and enabling technologies.
WRF was founded in 1981 to assist universities and other nonprofit research institutions in Washington with the commercialization and licensing of their technologies. WRF became one of the foremost technology transfer organizations in the nation, earning more than $445 million in licensing revenue for the University of Washington. To date, WRF has provided over $188 million in grants to the state’s research institutions.
WRF Capital, the investment vehicle for Washington Research Foundation, has backed 132 local startups since 1996. Returns support the Foundation’s grantmaking and investment programs.
About the Invent at Seattle Children’s Postdoctoral Scholars Program:
The Invent at Seattle Children’s Scholars Program supports the next generation of leaders in translational medicine. Designed for exceptional early-career scientists and clinicians, Invent provides rigorous training, personalized mentorship, advanced biotech infrastructure and dedicated funding to accelerate the development of innovative therapies for children and young adults.
