Curtis, Lee, and Shin at work in the Lee Lab.

Professor Jiwon Lee and his team are working to ensure cancer patients have access to the best treatment possible. In collaboration with Dartmouth-Hitchcock’s Norris Cotton Cancer Center, Lee and his team are developing new cancer drug screen technology that connects patients to safer, more effective treatment—quickly. Lee’s group, including postdoctoral fellow Seungmin Shin and PhD candidate and NSF graduate fellow Nicholas Curtis, was one of three teams to receive the first awards from the Dartmouth Innovations Accelerator for Cancer last year. The accelerator, a philanthropy-funded initiative launched in 2020 by Norris Cotton and the Magnuson Center for Entrepreneurship, aims to fund the rapid translation of exciting discoveries into life-changing treatments. The program will provide researchers across Dartmouth with the support, entrepreneurial guidance, and infrastructure needed to translate innovations into the marketplace.

With the $50,000 Quinn Scholar Award, Lee and his team will develop Barcoded-Antibody Library for In-Vitro Engineering (B-ALIVE), a technology platform to enable more accurate, high-throughput screening of new cancer drugs, specifically monoclonal antibodies.

In addition to the award, the team participated in a 10-week course in drug and medical device product development with in-structors from local biomedical firms Simbex and Celdara Medical. Lessons focused on biomedical entrepreneurship and regulatory requirements and the team created a step-by-step, multi-year plan for the development of B-ALIVE.