Researcher Stories
Get to know the PhRMA Foundation’s award recipients.
Dr. Alexandra Piotrowski-Daspit: Tailoring Delivery of Gene Therapies to Lung Cells
Dr. Alexandra Piotrowski-Daspit of the University of Michigan is developing biodegradable nanoparticles that can carry gene therapies directly to lung cells to hopefully treat diseases like cystic fibrosis.
Watch NowAnnie Londregan: Identifying New Therapeutic Targets for Visceral Pain
Annie Londregan, a PhD student at Thomas Jefferson University, aims to identify a new therapeutic target for visceral pain, the type of pain that originates from abdominal or pelvic organs.
Read MoreUdim Damachi: Assessing the Effectiveness of Blood Pressure Drugs for Preventing Heart Failure in Breast Cancer Patients
PhD student Udim Damachi at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, is using real-world data to investigate whether blood pressure medications are effective in preventing heart failure in breast cancer patients.
Watch NowMeasuring Microplastics in the Placenta and Assessing Their Health Impacts
Dr. Marcus Garcia, a postdoc at the University of New Mexico, has developed a method to measure microplastics in tissue and is studying the amount of microplastics in the placenta and their health impacts.
Awardee Spotlight
Chandrabali Bhattacharya, PhD, MSc
- University of Nevada, Las Vegas
“I am absolutely thrilled to have been awarded the Faculty Starter Grant in Drug Delivery. This grant will be instrumental in enabling my lab to develop a lipid nanoparticle platform that can selectively carry CAR mRNA to T cells. This technology could potentially lead to an in vivo CAR system that would eliminate the need for adoptive cell transfer with just a single injection. I am extremely grateful for this opportunity and excited to see where this research will take us.”
Assessing the Safety of Kidney Transplant Medications in Children
Wesam Ismail, a PhD student at the University of Iowa, is using real-world data to evaluate the impact on pediatric transplant patients of different types of drugs that help prevent the body from rejecting a new kidney.