Advancing Genetic Medicine: Discovery, Development, and Delivery

• The first author must be a graduate student, postdoctoral fellow, or clinical resident (e.g., intern, resident, or fellow in medicine or pharmacy).
• Only one first author per paper is allowed. All award money will be distributed to the first author only.
• Employees of pharmaceutical companies are allowed to compete but are not eligible to receive award money due to restrictions on provision of financial awards by the Foundation.
• To qualify for the award, authors must be aged 18 or over and must not be resident in North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Sudan, Syria, Burma/Myanmar, Russia, Belarus, the territories of Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk or in other territories where any U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions apply at the time of the award.

Genetic medicine is a rapidly advancing and transformative frontier in health care that uses nucleic acids such as DNA and mRNA and gene-editing modalities to treat or prevent diseases. The success of mRNA vaccines highlights the potential of genetic medicine, but challenges remain throughout the therapeutic lifecycle from target identification and drug design to scalable manufacturing and efficient in vivo delivery.

This call invites original research articles and review papers that address breakthroughs and ongoing obstacles across the entire pipeline of genetic medicines, including gene therapy, gene editing, and RNA-based therapies. The scope of potential contributions includes the discovery and engineering of novel biomolecular drug modalities, advanced formulation and manufacturing techniques, and the development of innovative delivery systems to overcome biological barriers. 

Eligible authors should submit manuscripts through Pharmaceutical Research’s online submission portal. Submissions are due by June 1, 2026.

All submissions must adhere to Pharmaceutical Research’s author guidelines. All submissions will undergo Pharmaceutical Research’s peer-review process. All papers accepted for publication will be published, but only those selected as winners by the PhRMA Foundation’s Scientific Advisory Committee will receive the $5,000 Challenge Award.

Please direct any questions about the scope of the call or submission requirements to the journal. Please direct any Challenge Award eligibility questions to info@phrmafoundation.org.