Harrington Discovery Institute Announces 2025 Scholar-Innovator Award Recipients

Drug development grant will advance 10 physician-scientists' discoveries toward the clinic

CLEVELAND, June 3, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Harrington Discovery Institute at University Hospitals in Cleveland, Ohio, today announced the 2025 class of Harrington Scholar-Innovators. The scholar awards will support breakthrough new treatments for common and rare diseases, including cardiovascular, inflammatory and infectious diseases and cancer, using small molecule, nucleic acid, cell-based, and genetic therapies.

Harrington Discovery Institute was established in 2012 to accelerate the development of new treatments to address unmet needs in medicine. Since its founding, Harrington has supported 214 drugs-in-the-making, 74 institutions, 43 company launches, 21 clinical candidates, and 15 licenses to pharma.

"These 10 discoveries hold great promise for transforming patient care. Our goal is to help an exceptional class of Scholar-Innovators see the impact of their work become a reality," said Jonathan S. Stamler, MD, President and Co-Founder, Harrington Discovery Institute, Distinguished University Professor, Robert S. and Sylvia K. Reitman Family Foundation Chair of Cardiovascular Innovation, and Professor of Medicine and of Biochemistry at University Hospitals and Case Western Reserve University.

"These physician-scientists represent the best of academic medicine—innovative, driven, and focused on impact. Through Harrington's unique model of support, we aim to accelerate their progress toward delivering new therapies to the patients who need them most," said Seth J. Field, MD, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer and Director, Physician-Scientist Programs, Harrington Discovery Institute, Becky Hennessy Endowed Master Clinician in Breast Cancer Genomics, and Professor of Medicine at University Hospitals and Case Western Reserve University.

In addition to grant funding and drug and business development guidance, Harrington Scholar-Innovators have the opportunity to compete for acceleration funds up to $300,000 and to qualify for mission-related investment funds typically up to $2MM. Scholars have facilitated access to Harrington's mission-aligned commercial entities including the Advent-Harrington Impact Fund, and to its charitable partner Morgan Stanley GIFT Cures.

The 2025 Harrington Scholar-Innovator Award recipients, their organizations and fields of research are:  

Ravit Boger, MD – Medical College of Wisconsin
Drugs to treat a deadly viral infection in immunocompromised patients

Robert Bonomo, MD – Case Western Reserve University
New antibiotics to treat drug-resistant bacterial infections

Jacob Brenner, MD, PhD – University of Pennsylvania
A new approach to enable gene therapy to treat multiple diseases

George Daley, MD, PhD – Boston Children's Hospital
Treating autoimmune disease with off-the-shelf immune cells

Hamed Jafar-Nejad, MD – Baylor College of Medicine
Gene therapy to treat a rare inherited disease, Alagille Syndrome

Danny Khalil, MD, PhD – Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
A drug to enable our immune systems to attack solid cancers 

Deepak Nijhawan, MD, PhD – University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center  
Treatment of common cancers by inhibiting ribosomes (cell machines that make proteins)

Alexander Rotenberg, MD, PhD – Boston Children's Hospital
Gene therapy for a rare inherited disease, Succinic Semialdehyde Dehydrogenase Deficiency (SSADHD)

Nathan Stitziel, MD, PhD – Washington University in St. Louis
Treatment for heart disease and stroke by inhibiting novel pathways

Leonard Zon, MD – Boston Children's Hospital
Improving growth of stem cells to enable bone marrow transplants 

Harrington Discovery Institute is now accepting Letters of Intent for the 2026 Harrington Scholar-Innovator Award. The deadline to submit a brief Letter of Intent is June 4, 202511:59 PM. The full application deadline, for those invited to submit, is August 4, 2025. Learn more and apply to the 2026 Scholar-Innovator Award at HarringtonDiscovery.org/Scholar-Innovators.

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SOURCE Harrington Discovery Institute