In 2025, the PhRMA Foundation (PhF) is celebrating our 60th anniversary. Since our founding in 1965, we have awarded more than $100 million in grants to over 2,700 researchers at hundreds of U.S. universities and institutions. | |
Celebrating 60 Years of Launching Careers | | |
| Read Our Anniversary Report | |
On May 31, 1965, the PhRMA Foundation was established to support promising researchers and their novel ideas to foster biopharmaceutical innovation.
| | Hear directly from our 2025 award recipients about their research and career paths. | | Dr. Elizabeth Brunk: Leveraging AI and Single Cell Sequencing to Prevent Harmful DNA Adaptations in Cancer | | Ameya Chaudhari: Designing Innovative Meshes for Accelerated Diabetic Wound Healing | | Dr. Erick Rodriguez-Palma: Targeting Ion Channels for Fibromyalgia Treatment | | Shruti Dharmaraj: Developing Molecules to Treat Allergic Reactions | | |
Dr. Zhimin Huang: Engineering
a Noninvasive, Targeted Approach
to Treating Brain Diseases
| | Two Pharma Leaders Join Foundation Board | | |
Patrizia Cavazzoni, MD
Chief Medical Officer and Executive Vice President, Pfizer
Dr. Cavazzoni oversees regulatory, pharmacovigilance, safety, epidemiology, and medical research functions at Pfizer. Previously, she served as the director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, where she led regulatory and policy decisions on prescription and over-the-counter medicines. Her extensive pharmaceutical industry experience includes senior executive roles at Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and Sanofi.
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Fiona H. Marshall, PhD
President of Biomedical Research, Novartis
Dr. Marshall leads a global team across nine Novartis research sites, where she drives the discovery of high-impact medicines. Previously, she was Senior Vice President and Global Head of Discovery Sciences, Preclinical Development, and Translational Medicine at Merck. Prior to that, she co-founded Heptares Therapeutics, a UK-based biotech focused on structure-based drug design, and held senior scientific roles at Millennium Pharmaceuticals and GSK.
| | Eliciting Patient Preferences to Assess the Value of Breast and Prostate Cancer Therapies | |
The U.S. spends billions of dollars each year on medicines to treat 320,000 new cases of breast cancer and 314,00 new cases of prostate cancer. But health care stakeholders — patients, providers, and payers — often have differing opinions when it comes to the “value” of new medicines.
William Padula, PhD, of the University of Southern California received a $500,000 Frontier Award in Value Assessment from the PhRMA Foundation to conduct research on the value of therapies for metastatic breast and prostate cancers, with a focus on the inclusion of patient perspectives. Read our latest blog to learn how Padula is engaging patients in his research.
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Congrats to these Foundation-funded researchers on their recent work.
**Indicates research directly supported by a PhRMA Foundation award.
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**RNApysoforms: fast rendering interactive visualization of RNA isoform structure and expression in Python, Bioinformatics Advances
Bernardo Aguzzoli Heberle (PhF25) and Mark T. W. Ebbert (PhF17), University of Kentucky
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**Barcoded viral tracing identifies immunosuppressive astrocyte-glioma interactions, Nature
Brian M. Andersen, MD, PhD (PhF22), Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School
**Glioblastoma-instructed astrocytes suppress tumour-specific T cell immunity, Nature
Brian M. Andersen, MD, PhD (PhF22), Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School
**CLEC16A in astrocytes promotes mitophagy and limits pathology in a multiple sclerosis mouse model, Nature Neuroscience
Brian M. Andersen, MD, PhD (PhF22), Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School
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**Glioma-neuronal circuit remodeling induces regional immunosuppression, Nature Communications
Andy G. S. Daniel, PhD (PhF22), University of California, San Francisco
Gabapentinoids confer survival benefit in human glioblastoma, Nature Communications
Andy G. S. Daniel, PhD (PhF22), University of California, San Francisco
Predicting therapeutic clinical trial enrollment for adult patients with low- and high-grade glioma using supervised machine learning, Science Advances
Andy G. S. Daniel, PhD (PhF22), University of California, San Francisco
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Web-Based Cancer Symptom Self-Management System: A Randomized Clinical Trial, JAMA Network Open
Maja Kuharic, MPharm, MSc, PhD (PhF25), Northwestern University
Frequency and severity response scales for pain and discomfort: psychometric insights from EQ-HWB, Quality of Life Research
Maja Kuharic, MPharm, MSc, PhD (PhF25), Northwestern University
Psychometric evaluation of the NoMAD instrument in cancer care settings: assessing factorial validity, measurement invariance, and differential item functioning, Implementation Science Communications
Maja Kuharic, MPharm, MSc, PhD (PhF25), Northwestern University
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Roles of AI-Based Synthetic Data in Health Economics and Outcomes Research, Value in Health
Tim C. Lai, BPharm (PhF25) and Surachat Ngorsuraches, PhD (PhF23), Auburn University
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**How I individualize treatment for chronic-phase CML, Blood
Ariel Leyte-Vidal (PhF25), University of Miami
| | Eleanor Agosta (PhF25) of Rutgers University received the Massimo Tommasino Award for best presentation from a young researcher at the 7th Meeting on Emerging Issues in Oncogenic Virus Research in June. | | Shamimur Akanda, PhD (PhF25) of Washington University in St. Louis received a poster award in Washington University Musculoskeletal Research Symposium for his PhF-supported research. | | Brian Andersen, MD, PhD (PhF22) of Brigham and Women’s Hospital received a Career Development Award to establish his own lab as a neuro-oncologist at Boston Veterans Affairs. | Christopher Cadham, MPH, PhD (PhF23) of the University of Michigan successfully defended his dissertation and in the fall will start as an assistant professor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle. He also presented his PhF-funded research at the annual meeting of the Society for Medical Decision Making in June. | Shruti Dharmaraj, MS (PhF25) of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, was selected for an oral presentation at the American Association for Immunologists conference in May and her abstract won a trainee award. She was also selected for an oral presentation at the Controlled Release Society Conference in July. | | Wesam Ismail, PhD (PhF24) of the University of Iowa successfully defended his dissertation and passed his final exam. | | Maja Kuharic, MPharm, MSc, PhD (PhF25) of Northwestern University chaired the 5th EuroQol Early Career Meeting held in March for the second year in a row. | | William Padula, PhD (PhF23) was promoted to associate professor with tenure at the University of Southern California. "My grants from PhRMA Foundation over the past several years have played an enormous role in the scholarship carried out to receive that promotion," he said. | Xiaoshu Pan, PhD (PhF23) of the University of Florida gave an oral talk about her PhF-supported research at the American Society of Gene + Cell Therapy annual meeting in May and received the organization's Meritorious Abstract Travel Award. | Wei "Adelyn" Tsai (PhF25) or Mayo Clinic gave a talk featuring preliminary data for my PhF fellowship project at the AD/PD 2025 International Conference in April. | Marek D. Zorawski, PhD (PhF24) of Duke University successfully defended his PhD and presented a poster at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting in April. | | |
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