July 15, 2020

Nominations Open for 8th Annual Harrington Prize for Innovation in Medicine

Harrington Discovery Institute and the ASCI collaborate to recognize an outstanding achievement of a physician-scientist globally

July 15, 2020, CLEVELAND, Ohio USA – National and international nominations are being sought for the 2021 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 deadline for nominations is September 18, 2020.

Nomination guidelines can be found at: HarringtonDiscovery.org/ThePrize.

The Harrington Prize, which carries a $20,000 honorarium, is a collaboration between the Harrington Discovery Institute at University Hospitals in Cleveland, Ohio—part of The Harrington Project for Discovery & Development and the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), one of the nation’s oldest and most respected medical honor societies. The Harrington Discovery Institute is a nonprofit institute dedicated to supporting physician-scientists, and all scientists in areas of unmet therapeutic need, in their work to transform discoveries into medicines for the benefit of society.

Both organizations recognize the challenges associated with turning 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 2021 recipient will deliver the Harrington Prize Lecture at the 2021 Joint Meeting of the Association of American Physicians (AAP), the ASCI, and the American Physician Scientists Association (APSA); will lecture at the 2021 Harrington Discovery Institute Symposium; and will publish a personal essay in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

Previous award winners are: Stuart H. Orkin, MD, Harvard Medical School, for his contributions to red blood cell biology (2020); 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 (2019); Helen H. Hobbs, MD, UT Southwestern Medical Center, for her discovery of the link between a gene mutation (PCSK9) and lower levels of LDL, which has improved the treatment of high cholesterol (2018); 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 (2017); 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 (2016); Douglas R. Lowy, MD, The National Cancer Institute, for his discoveries that led to the development of the Human Papillomavirus vaccine to prevent cervical cancer (2015); Harry Dietz, III, MD, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, for his contributions to the understanding of the biology and treatment of Marfan syndrome, a disorder leading to deadly aneurysms in children and adults (2014).