2025 Peg’s Fight For Life Research Award Recipient
Dr. B.J. (Byungji) Kim, Assistant Professor in the Division of Molecular Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery at The University of Texas at Austin
Dr. B.J. (Byungji) Kim is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Molecular Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery at The University of Texas at Austin, where she leads the Kimmunity Lab (https://www.kimmunotherapy.com/). Her interdisciplinary research program combines RNA engineering, immunoengineering, and biomaterials to develop next-generation immunotherapies for solid tumors.
Dr. Kim earned her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of California, San Diego, where she developed modular RNA delivery platforms for combinatorial cancer therapy. She then completed her postdoctoral training in immunoengineering at MIT in the lab of Dr. Darrell Irvine, where she investigated RNA immunotherapies for primary lung cancer and identified innate immune barriers that limit the efficacy of RNA-based vaccines and therapies.
Dr. Kim has been recognized with numerous awards, including selection as a 2025 Arthur and Sandra Irving Scholar in Cancer Immunology, recipient of the 2023 Peter Karches Mentorship Prize at MIT, and national conference honors from 2024 World Biomaterials Congress, 2023 NanoDDS, 2018 Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES).
Research Project Summary:
Despite advances in immunotherapy, patients with EGFR-mutant non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) often fail to respond to immune checkpoint inhibitors. One major challenge is the tumor’s low immunogenicity—driven by weak antigen presentation and a suppressive tumor microenvironment—that limits the ability of T cells to recognize and eliminate cancer cells. Building on prior work in infectious disease models, Dr. Kim discovered that type I interferon (IFN-I) signaling triggered by lipid nanoparticle (LNP) delivery can paradoxically suppress antigen translation and blunt immune priming. To overcome this, her group is developing a bifunctional ON/OFF RNA platform that encodes both a tumor antigen and an shRNA targeting IFNAR1, the receptor mediating IFN-I signaling. This innovative design ensures that immune regulation is spatially and temporally coupled to antigen expression in the same cells.
With support from A Breath of Hope Lung Foundation, Dr. Kim will apply this technology in preclinical models of EGFR-mutant NSCLC, including a mouse model encoding the human EGFR-L858R driver mutation. Her studies aim to enhance CD8 T cell recognition of self-like tumor antigens and broaden the immune repertoire in immunotherapy-resistant lung cancers. This work represents a new strategy to reprogram the innate immune environment during antigen delivery and improve durable responses to immunotherapy.
Progress Report May 2026
Lung cancers driven by EGFR mutations are often difficult to treat with immunotherapy because the immune system struggles to recognize and respond to these tumors. Our project seeks to improve this process by developing new RNA-based therapies that help the immune system better detect cancer cells and generate stronger anti-tumor responses.
During the first six months of this award, we made significant progress in designing and optimizing the novel RNA platform that will be used throughout the project. We developed and identified lead candidates of the construct that produce high levels of the desired tumor-targeting signals.
We also continued investigating how the body’s natural immune pathways influence the effectiveness of RNA therapies. Using muscle cells that more closely resemble those targeted during vaccination, we confirmed that temporary modulation of interferon signaling can substantially increase production of therapeutic proteins. These findings provide additional support for our strategy of improving immune recognition by carefully controlling early immune responses.
In addition, we completed initial safety studies in mice. Encouragingly, the modified vaccine approach produced lower levels of inflammatory signals in the bloodstream compared with conventional RNA vaccination, suggesting that the therapy may be not only effective, but also well tolerated and safe to use.
Together, these studies establish an important foundation for the next phase of the project, where we will evaluate whether this approach can improve anti-tumor immune responses in lung cancer models. Our long-term goal is to develop new immunotherapy strategies for patients with EGFR-mutant lung cancer, a group that currently has limited treatment options once standard therapies stop working.