Nominations Open for 12th Annual International Harrington Prize for Innovation in Medicine

CLEVELAND – National and international nominations are being sought for the 2025 Harrington Prize for Innovation in Medicine, which honors a physician-scientist who has moved science forward with achievements notable for innovation, creativity and the potential for clinical application. 

The Harrington Prize, which carries a $20,000 honorarium, is a collaboration between Harrington Discovery Institute at University Hospitals in Cleveland, Ohio and the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), one of the nation’s oldest and most respected medical honor societies. Harrington Discovery Institute is a nonprofit institute dedicated to helping physician-scientists accelerate promising discoveries into medicines for unmet needs.

Both organizations recognize the challenges associated with translating academic discoveries into medicines, and they are eager to highlight those who have navigated the path successfully or whose work has led to novel treatments.

A committee composed of members of the Harrington Discovery Institute Scientific Advisory Board and the ASCI Council will review the nominations and select the awardee. In addition to the honorarium, the 2025 recipient will deliver the Harrington Prize Lecture at the 2025 Joint Meeting of the Association of American Physicians (AAP), the ASCI, and the American Physician Scientists Association (APSA); will lecture at the 2025 Harrington Discovery Institute Symposium; and will publish a personal essay in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Submitting a Nomination:

• Nominee must have an MD or MD/PhD (or equivalent).
• Deadline for nominations is September 16, 2024.
• Multiple nominations from an institution are welcomed.
• Teams are accepted for a nomination, but a primary nominee is required.
• Nomination guidelines can be found at HarringtonDiscovery.org/Prize.

Harrington Prize Recipients (2014 – 2024):

• 2024: Arlene Sharpe, MD, PhD, Harvard University, for her breakthrough discoveries in immune regulation, which have established foundational principles in immunology and led to new cancer therapies.
• 2023: Jointly awarded to Jean Bennett, MD, PhD, and Albert M. Maguire, MD, both from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, for their groundbreaking translational research to restore sight in inherited genetic disease.
• 2022: Jointly awarded to James E. Crowe, Jr., MD, Vanderbilt University, and Michel C. Nussenzweig, MD, PhD, The Rockefeller University, for their groundbreaking work in immunology, which has elucidated fundamental principles of the human immune response and enabled the use of human antibodies to treat COVID-19.
• 2021: Jointly awarded to Warren J. Leonard, MD, NHLBI, and John J. O’Shea, MD, NIAMS, NIH, for their respective contributions to the field of immunology, from fundamental discovery to therapeutic impact.
• 2020: Stuart H. Orkin, MD, Harvard University, for breakthrough discoveries on red blood cells that offer new treatments for patients with sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia, which are among the most common genetic disorders.
• 2019: Carl H. June, MD, University of Pennsylvania, for advancing the clinical application of CAR T therapy for cancer treatment, and for his sustained contributions to the field of cellular immunology.
• 2018: Helen H. Hobbs, MD, UT Southwestern Medical Center, for the discovery of the link between a gene mutation (PCSK9) and lower levels of LDL, which has improved the treatment of high cholesterol.
• 2017: Jointly awarded to Daniel J. Drucker, MD, Mount Sinai Hospital, Canada, Joel F. Habener, MD, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Jens J. Holst, MD, DMSc, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, for their discovery of incretin hormones and for the translation of these findings into transformative therapies for major metabolic diseases such as diabetes.
• 2016: Jeffrey M. Friedman, MD, PhD, The Rockefeller University, for his discovery of leptin, which controls feeding behavior and is used to treat related clinical disorders.
• 2015: Douglas R. Lowy, MD, The National Cancer Institute, in recognition of his discoveries that led to the development of the Human Papillomavirus vaccine to prevent cervical cancer.
• 2014: Harry Dietz, MD, Johns Hopkins University, for his contributions to the understanding of the biology and treatment of Marfan syndrome, a disorder leading to deadly aneurysms in children and adults.

For questions or more information about the nomination requirements, visit HarringtonDiscovery.org/Prize.