Duke Pathology PhD candidate Joey Ragusa has received two competitive awards supporting his research on HER2-positive breast cancer brain metastases. Ragusa, a graduate student in the Tumor Immunology and Immunotherapeutics Laboratory led by Zachary Hartman, PhD, was selected for a 2026 Duke Institute for Brain Sciences (DIBS) PhD Fellowship and received a Precision Genomics Collaboratory (PGC) and Office of Biomedical Graduate Education (OBGE) Biomedical PhD Student Research Pilot Grant.
Ragusa's research focuses on understanding how antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), a class of targeted cancer therapies, stimulate the immune system in HER2-positive breast cancer that has spread to the brain.
"The immune environment of brain metastases presents unique challenges for cancer treatment, and ADCs have remarkably overcome some of these challenges," Ragusa said. "These awards will help us learn more about how ADCs stimulate anti-tumor immunity in the brain and identify ways to boost their activity."
The DIBS fellowship supports PhD students conducting brain-related research by providing stipend and research funding for conference travel, professional training, and career-development opportunities that help students strengthen their research and communication skills. The program was created to help retain promising graduate researchers and strengthen Duke's interdisciplinary brain sciences community
The OBGE Biomedical PhD Student Research Pilot Grant is designed to support Duke graduate students whose work incorporates genomics and other omics-based approaches. This grant will fund RNA sequencing studies of ADC-treated brain tumors, enabling Ragusa to characterize the immune pathways activated within the brain tumor microenvironment following treatment.
By combining immunology, oncology, and genomics, Ragusa's dissertation research seeks to better understand how targeted cancer therapies engage the immune system within the brain and how those responses can be leveraged to improve outcomes for patients with brain metastases.
“For decades, patients with brain metastases were frequently left out of clinical trials because of safety concerns, but that came with the side effect of a gap in our understanding of how immune-based therapies work in the brain,” said Ragusa. “I’m incredibly grateful for the support of these awards. They will advance our work at the bench and help us take another step toward closing that gap.”
These awards reflect both the promise of Ragusa’s dissertation research and Duke's continued investment in training the next generation of biomedical scientists.