Researcher Stories

Get to know the PhRMA Foundation’s award recipients.

Harnessing Cancer’s Vulnerabilities to Develop New Therapies

Meredith Nix, a PhD student at Stanford University, is developing a new way to treat a hard-to-target form of lung cancer by turning a feature unique to cancer cells against them, triggering the cells to self-destruct while leaving healthy cells unharmed.

Finding Her Purpose in Developing Treatments for Brain Injuries

Prerna Tiwari, a PhD student at Creighton University aims to develop a drug could protect the brain from lasting damage after cardiac arrest by reducing harmful inflammation.

Rethinking How We Measure the Value of Obesity Treatments in the GLP-1 Era

Neeti Kulkarni, a PhD student at the University of Michigan, aims to measure how people value different obesity-related health outcomes and treatments, including GLP-1 medications.

Developing a Cell Therapy to Fight Infection in Vulnerable Patients

An MD-PhD student at Brown University, Melanie Martinsen is researching a potential cell-based therapy for patients vulnerable to infection due to low levels of neutrophils, infection-fighting white blood cells.

Awardee Spotlight

Julia Bleier, PhD

Cornell University

“This award will support my mechanistic studies of metabotropic glutamate receptors and allow me to expand the scope of my work towards the development of novel modulators.”

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Building Better Gene Therapies Through Bioengineering

Kijung Kwak, an MD-PhD student at the University of Maryland-College Park, received a 2026 PhRMA Predoctoral Fellowship in Drug Delivery for his research to develop a more effective way to deliver gene therapies to the brain for Parkinson’s disease.