Kheewoong Baek, PhD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, has been named this year’s Damon Runyon-Meghan E. Raveis Fellow. This award honors former Damon Runyon Board Member Meghan Raveis, who tragically passed in a car accident in 2023.

As Managing Director of the William Raveis Charitable Fund, Meghan was responsible for the strategic direction, operations, promotion, execution, and placement of its fundraising. Through her dedicated efforts, the fund more than quadrupled. In 2015, she launched the largest event in the charitable fund’s history, the Raveis Ride + Walk, an annual family-friendly fundraising event supporting Damon Runyon. At the time of her passing, the Raveis Ride + Walk had raised nearly $4 million for cancer research and supported more than 20 Damon Runyon scientists studying dozens of types of cancer with William Raveis Charitable Fund Fellowships.

As a Damon Runyon-Meghan E. Raveis Fellow, Dr. Baek is advancing a new type of targeted cancer therapy. By attaching a small molecule known as ubiquitin to a cancer-causing protein, drug developers can target that protein for degradation by the cell. This strategy has proven effective with drugs such as Lenalidomide/Revlimid to treat multiple myeloma, but does not work for all cancer-causing proteins. Dr. Baek aims to expand the usefulness of this strategy by designing a “molecular glue” that binds proteins to ubiquitin, enabling the targeting of proteins previously deemed undruggable.

Learn more about the William Raveis Charitable Fund here.