March 19, 2025

International Harrington Prize Awarded to Dr. Owen Witte

The twelfth annual Harrington Prize for Innovation in Medicine has been awarded to Owen N. Witte, MD, Distinguished University Professor and President's Chair in Developmental Immunology, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles. The award recognizes his foundational discoveries of targeted therapies that have transformed modern cancer treatment.

The Harrington Prize for Innovation in Medicine, established in 2014 by the Harrington Discovery Institute at University Hospitals and the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), honors physician-scientists who have moved science forward with achievements notable for innovation, creativity and potential for clinical application.

Dr. Witte is internationally known for his contributions to the understanding of human leukemias and immune disorders. His work revealed the critical role of enzymes called tyrosine kinases in human disease.

Dr. Witte discovered one of the first tyrosine kinases, the ABL oncoprotein, showing that its activity is responsible for causing chronic myeloid leukemia (CML)—a cancer of white blood cells. He predicted that drugs that inhibit the tyrosine kinase would have therapeutic benefit. Based on Dr. Witte’s work, the drug imatinib, an inhibitor of tyrosine kinase ABL, was developed as frontline therapy. Imatinib increases the 8-year survival rate for CML from 6% to 87%.

Dr. Witte subsequently discovered Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK). He provided evidence that BTK’s tyrosine kinase activity was important for both normal immune function (loss of BTK led to immunodeficiency disease) and white blood cell cancers—ultimately spurring the development of the BTK inhibitor drug ibrutinib, now used to treat several types of lymphomas and leukemias.

"It is a great honor to present Dr. Witte with the Harrington Prize for Innovation in Medicine. His transformative contributions to cancer research have not only reshaped our understanding of leukemia, lymphoma, and epithelial cancers but have also revolutionized targeted therapies, directly impacting countless lives. His seminal contributions to the development of ABL and BTK inhibitors exemplifies the scientific creativity and impact this award stands for,” said Anna Greka, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Physician at Mass General Brigham, Core Institute Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and 2024-2025 ASCI President.

"Dr. Witte’s remarkable work serves as a powerful illustration of how basic discovery can inform the development of life-saving therapies. His groundbreaking work has bridged the gap between the laboratory bench and the clinical bedside, extending human life,” said Jonathan S. Stamler, President & Co-Founder, Harrington Discovery Institute, Robert S. and Sylvia K. Reitman Family Foundation Chair of Cardiovascular Innovation, Distinguished University Professor, and Professor of Medicine and of Biochemistry at University Hospitals and Case Western Reserve University.

A committee composed of members of the ASCI Council and the Harrington Discovery Institute Scientific Advisory Board reviewed nominations from leading academic medical centers from six countries before selecting the 2025 Harrington Prize recipient.

In addition to receiving the Prize’s $20,000 honorarium, Dr. Witte will deliver the Harrington Prize Lecture at the 2025 AAP/ASCI/APSA Joint Meeting on April 25-27, and he will be a featured speaker at the 2025 Harrington Scientific Symposium May 21-22 and is invited to publish an essay in the Journal of Clinical Investigation.

The Harrington Prize has recognized outstanding and diverse innovations in medicine since 2014:

• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 2021: Warren J. Leonard, MD, and John J. O’Shea, MD, NIH, for their respective contributions to the field of immunology, from fundamental discovery to therapeutic impact.
• 2022: James E. Crowe Jr., MD, Vanderbilt University, and Michel C. Nussenzweig, MD, PhD, The Rockefeller University, for their groundbreaking work, which has elucidated fundamental principles of the human immune response and enabled the use of human antibodies to treat COVID-19.
• 2023: Jean Bennett, MD, PhD, University of Pennsylvania, and Albert M. Maguire, MD, University of Pennsylvania, for their groundbreaking translational research to restore sight in inherited genetic diseases.
• 2024: Arlene H. Sharpe, MD, PhD, Harvard Medical School, for her breakthrough discoveries in immune regulation, which have led to new cancer therapies that act by boosting the immune response to cancer.