Three-year grant will aid in the development of a sustainable clinical trials program for medicines invented at both institutions
Seattle, WA – October 30, 2025
Washington Research Foundation (WRF) has awarded a $5.2 million grant to Fred Hutch Cancer Center (Fred Hutch) for a collaboration with Seattle Children’s Research Institute (Seattle Children’s) to develop a comprehensive program to enable clinical trials of innovative therapeutics invented at the two research institutions.
The Bridging the Clinical Gap: Adding Value to the Discovered Here in Washington Therapeutic Ecosystem program is led by Dr. Folashade Otegbeye, an associate professor and facility director of the Therapeutic Products Program at Fred Hutch, and Dr. Mignon Loh, director of the Ben Towne Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Disorders Research at Seattle Children’s.
Drs. Otegbeye and Loh will work with colleagues and partners at both institutions to develop therapeutics for first-in-human clinical studies for rare and severe health conditions affecting adults and children.
The grant is the second to be awarded from WRF’s BioInnovation Grants program, which was created earlier this year to increase support for big, emergent opportunities to advance Washington state’s life sciences ecosystem and improve lives. WRF will make the payment over three years. Funds will be used to both directly support clinical studies of promising therapeutics originating from Fred Hutch and Seattle Children’s that have already shown considerable safety and efficacy in the earlier stages of research, and to lay the groundwork for sustainable and coordinated resources, infrastructure and processes to advance these therapeutics to human trials in the future. Fred Hutch and Seattle Children’s will each provide significant matching funds for both the individual clinical studies and the broader program.
The Fred Hutch and Seattle Children’s teams designed the program with assistance from a $200,000 planning grant WRF awarded from a new request for proposals in 2024. Researchers used some of the funding to evaluate the potential of more than a dozen technologies, identifying two that will be the program’s initial priorities: an engineered TCR-T cell therapy for high-risk acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in adult patients and a CAR T-cell therapy for AML in pediatric populations. With the planning grant, the program leaders have also initiated evaluation of strategies to support time- and resource-efficient translation of protein therapeutic research in Seattle into first-in-human trials. The first output from this endeavor is an upcoming workshop dedicated to outlining small batch manufacturing infrastructure needs of the region’s pipeline of protein therapeutics.
Although institutions like Fred Hutch and Seattle Children’s routinely conduct clinical trials, funding to take a novel therapeutic that is invented at a research institution is usually only obtained on a one-off basis, particularly for rare diseases or other indications that have small patient populations. The situation has been made worse by recent federal funding cuts. The one-off nature of clinical trial funding makes it difficult for institutions to strategically monitor their pipelines and conduct advance planning for bringing a promising product to patients. These types of first-in-human studies at research institutions are often the only way for patients to access cutting-edge therapies and provide crucial evidence of a drug’s safety and efficacy that could lead to its further development at scale.
The program will leverage the region’s expertise in life sciences therapeutics research and commercialization by connecting scientists, clinical trials experts, technology transfer specialists, industry and venture capital across multiple institutions.
Dr. Meher Antia, WRF’s director of grant programs, said, “WRF has long recognized the value of our most inventive research institutions translating their research expertise into actual clinical impact. By partnering with Fred Hutch and Seattle Children’s and leveraging the strong financial and operational support from these institutions, our funding can help to strengthen the pipeline of early-stage research that actually reaches patients for their benefit and also demonstrates potential for future commercialization.”
Dr. Otegbeye, who additionally holds the Fleischauer Family Endowed Chair in Cell and Gene Therapy Translation at Fred Hutch, emphasized the potential for “discovered here in Washington” technologies to improve patients’ lives and treatment options.
“There is exceptional expertise in cell, gene, and protein therapeutics discovery and translational research across Fred Hutch and Seattle Children’s,” Dr. Otegbeye said. “Each institution has independently invested in infrastructure supporting key stages of the bench-to-bedside continuum. Recognizing our shared responsibility to ensure that our collective science tangibly improves lives across Washington, we have an opportunity—and an obligation—to collaborate intentionally. By strategically leveraging our complementary infrastructure and expertise, we can more sustainably advance first-in-human studies, particularly as traditional research funding streams become increasingly constrained.”
###
About Washington Research Foundation:
Washington Research Foundation (WRF) supports research and scholarship 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 $184 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.
