Nikki Thiele, a staff scientist in the Chemical Sciences Division of the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), has received a 2026 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award . The five-year National Institutes of Health grant supports innovative research with the potential for broad impact on biomedical and behavioral science.
Thiele will develop innovative chelator designs to improve targeted radiopharmaceuticals. Radiopharmaceuticals are drugs that use radioactive atoms to help doctors either detect cancer through imaging or treat tumors by delivering radiation to them, with the aim of limiting exposure to healthy tissue. In targeted delivery for cancer patients, radioactive isotopes can be securely bound by specialized molecules called chelators. However, many medically promising radioisotopes have chemical properties that make them difficult to capture and stabilize using conventional chelators.
“This research will develop new bifunctional chelators to overcome long-standing barriers limiting the clinical use of many emerging medical radionuclides for targeted therapy and imaging of cancer,” Thiele wrote in her proposal. “By enabling more effective delivery of these radionuclides to tumors through chelator design, the proposed work will expand access to next-generation radiopharmaceuticals with improved precision, sensitivity and therapeutic potential.”
The research will integrate organic synthesis, radiochemistry, in vitro experiments and in vivo studies. It could advance personalized medicine by improving approaches to cancer diagnosis and treatment.
Thiele earned her doctorate in pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Florida, studying small-molecule prodrugs to improve the delivery of topical and oral therapeutic agents. Following postdoctoral work in bioinorganic chelator development at Cornell University, she joined ORNL’s Chemical Separations Group in 2020.
Her current research projects also explore chemical separations of rare earth elements and radioisotope separations using new receptors.
Established in 2007, the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award supports innovative research by early-career investigators who are within 10 years of their final degree or clinical residency and have not received an NIH R01 or equivalent grant. Thiele is among 42 New Innovator Award recipients in 2026.
Funding comes from the NIH Common Fund High-Risk, High-Reward Research program, overseen by the Office of Strategic Coordination within the Office of the Director. The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering will administer the award.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science . — Dawn Levy