Jake Gadwa Awarded F31 Training Grant
Feb 15, 2024
Congratulations to Jake Gadwa, a first year Immunology PhD student in the Karam Lab, for his recent F31 Training Grant Award! Jake, who completed his undergraduate and master’s studies in immunology and microbiology at Colorado State University, will be focusing on studying the immune response to radiation and immunotherapy in head and neck and pancreatic cancers during his doctoral program under the supervision of Dr. Sana Karam. He joins a team of 12 graduate students and post-docs working on a variety of pre-clinical studies in radiobiology in the Karam Lab.
The focus of Jake’s grant is to gain a better understanding on why some types of cancer respond to immunotherapy while others see limited benefit, and how we can target these factors to increase response rates. This question has important clinical implications, with the use of immunotherapy as a treatment modality becoming more commonplace, and many of these factors that influence response to treatment remain unclear.