Emma Chory Wins 2025 Hartwell Biomedical Research Award

Emma Chory, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Duke University and a member of the Center for Advanced Genomic Technologies, was one of 10 recipients of the 2025 Hartwell Individual Biomedical Research Award. Chory will receive $100,000 a year for the next three years to explore how she can a use robotic evolutionary systems to develop molecules capable of reaching key “undruggable” proteins affiliated with pediatric cancers.  

Treatment options for rare and aggressive pediatric brain cancers typically involve chemotherapy, radiation or surgery. While these approaches may be effective if the cancer is caught early, survival rates often plummet to less than 20 percent if the cancer has metastasized or recurs after remission. 

Many rare pediatric cancers are considered “undruggable” because the key proteins driving the cancer’s growth live deep inside the cell nucleus, where most modern pharmaceuticals cannot reach. These proteins also lack features like clear binding sites, preventing any drugs that do reach them from breaking them down. 

One therapeutic option involves peptides, which are short chains of amino acids, that can bind broad protein surfaces rather than fitting into a defined pocket like a key in a lock  While some peptides, like insulin, can be produced using bacteria, most require complex chemical synthesis that is difficult and prohibitively expensive to scale. Another challenge is that peptides are usually fragile inside the body and are quickly degraded before they reach their targets. One potential solution involves stabilizing peptides so they hold the right shape, survive long enough to enter cells, and reach the cell nucleus could make them powerful tools for targeting proteins once considered “undruggable.”  

This was a problem that Chory had considered more than a decade ago as a senior pursuing a degree in chemical engineering at Northeastern University. At the time, researchers had developed a molecule that could stabilize a peptide-based drug for HIV (originally developed at Duke) and transform it into an orally available pill. 

“It was a big deal to me that they could make this molecule  orally available, but that added chemistry was so much extra on top of what was already an expensive drug,” said Chory. “My senior thesis project explored the possibilities of what we could accomplish if we could somehow make these stabilized drugs just using bacteria.” 

Chory kept returning to the problem throughout her PhD as she continued working on difficult-to-synthesize cancer drugs. “We kept finding good molecular candidates, but they were so difficult to make that our chemistry collaborators often couldn’t synthesize enough of them to test,” she said. “It stalled a lot of progress.” 

So, Chory explored a different approach using a combination of robotics and evolutionary pressure. 

During her postdoctoral fellowship at MIT, Chory specialized in a process called directed evolution, which involves engineering proteins or different molecules to evolve or gain key characteristics, like the ability to inhibit cancer cell growth. This is achieved by changing a gene’s DNA, selecting promising variants from that mutation and replicating those variants. Using robotic platforms usually reserved for diagnostics or pharmaceutical companies, Chory and her team could complete this process on a large scale, enabling the testing of billions of variants in real-time. They could then select molecules that were the most stable, effective and able to reach their targets inside cells.

Rather than rely on chemistry, Chory hoped to use her system to evolve bacteria that could generate the stabilized peptides themselves. Not only would this process make peptides easier and more affordable to make and scale, but it could also help researchers discover and test new molecules at a much faster rate. “Ideally our system could create a molecule that comes out and is already in a really good position to be scaled, which makes it more affordable and accessible,” said Chory. 

This idea was of special interest to the Hartwell Foundation, which specializes in supporting research that could help treat childhood cancers. 

With the support from the Hartwell Foundation, Chory and her team will use their system to focus on MYC, one of the most important “undruggable” proteins affiliated with lethal brain tumors in children. The Hartwell Foundation will provide Chory with $100,000 a year for the next three years to support her work. 

“If we’re successful, this work could generate urgently needed therapies for pediatric cancers and establish a scalable pathway for developing new peptide machines for many other childhood diseases, ranging from HIV to leukemia,” said Chory. “We’re also thrilled to be so close to numerous clinical collaborators at the Duke University Medical Center, who can be an immediate resource for us as we work toward these big goals.” 

“If we’re successful, this work could generate urgently needed therapies for pediatric cancers and establish a scalable pathway for developing new peptide machines for many other childhood diseases, ranging from HIV to leukemia. We’re also thrilled to be so close to numerous clinical collaborators at the Duke University Medical Center, who can be an immediate resource for us as we work toward these big goals.”

– Emma Chory

Duke has been designated as one of The Hartwell Foundation’s Top 10 Centers of Biomedical Excellence every year since 2006. Each year, the foundation invites each top center to nominate three researchers to compete for Hartwell Individual Biomedical Research Awards for early-stage, innovative and cutting-edge biomedical research with the potential to benefit children’s health. 

“I’ve been thinking about this project since I was 21, so I’m excited to get back to this research now using the tools I’ve developed to specifically address this problem,” said Chory. “The Hartwell Foundation is all about helping children, and I’m grateful they see the potential and want to support this work.”