Newsletter | January 2025

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.

Happy New Year from the PhRMA Foundation! In 2024, we provided $3.86M in grants and fellowships to 37 researchers.

We look forward to another productive year in 2025. Thank you to all our supporters for making this work possible!

To celebrate our 60th anniversary, the PhRMA Foundation is partnering with scientific journals on Trainee Challenge Award competitions that will give prizes for outstanding manuscripts.

In each competition, the Foundation will provide the Challenge Award — a prize of $5,000 — to the first author of up to five winning papers. Additionally, PhF will pay the journal's open-access publishing fee for each winning paper.

Eligibility

• First authors must be graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, or clinical residents (e.g., interns, residents, or fellows in medicine or pharmacy). Award money will be distributed to the first author only.
• Employees of pharma companies are allowed to compete but are not eligible to receive award money due to restrictions on provision of financial awards by the Foundation.

2025 Award Recipients

The PhRMA Foundation awarded 34 early career researchers a total of $2.5 million in grants and fellowships focused on drug discovery, drug delivery, and translational medicine research.

Hear directly from our 2024 award recipients about their research and career paths.

Dr. Alexandra Piotrowski-Daspit: Tailoring Delivery of Gene Therapies to Lung Cells

Udim Damachi: Assessing Drugs Used for Heart Failure Prevention in Breast Cancer Patients

Madison Davis: A Needle-Free Alternative for Vaccine Delivery

Dr. Ziyang Zhang: Reshaping Immune Response with Chemistry

In a PhF webinar and blog post, three women scientists discuss their reasons for making the career move to the pharmaceutical industry, share the misconceptions they had about industry, and give advice for researchers considering an industry career. Read more.

Internships at pharmaceutical companies provide hands-on experience in industry, while allowing for unmatched networking opportunities. In this blog, two PhRMA Foundation awardees share about their summer internship experiences. Read more.

Congrats to these Foundation-funded researchers on their recent work.

**Indicates research directly supported by a PhRMA Foundation award.

Long-Term Opioid Therapy in Older Adults: Incidence and Risk Factors Related to Patient Characteristics and Initial Opioid Dispensed, Journal of the American Pharmacists Association

Iftekhar "Sharaf" Ahmed, BPharm, MS (PhF24), Purdue University

**Tissue-Specific Effects of Aging on Repeat-Mediated Mutation Hotspots In Vivo, Biomolecules

Alexandra D’Amico, PhD (PhF22), University of Texas at Austin

**Tetrahydropyrimidine Ionizable Lipids for Efficient mRNA Delivery, ACS Nano

Chandrabali Bhattacharya, PhD (PhF24), University of Nevada, Las Vegas

**Efficient convergent synthesis of 1,3-diazepinone nucleosides by ring-closing metathesis and direct glycosylation, RSC Advances

Adam Hedger, PhD (PhF22), University of Massachusetts

**Discharge Communication and the Achievement of Lifestyle and Behavioral Changes Post-Stroke in the Transitions of Care Stroke Disparities Study, American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine

Karlon H. Johnson Jr., PhD (PhF23), University of Miami

The effect of 30-day adequate transitions of acute stroke care on 90-day readmission or death, Journal of Stroke and Cerebrovascular Diseases

Karlon H. Johnson Jr., PhD (PhF23), University of Miami

GLP-1 Receptor Agonist and SGLT2 Inhibitor Prescribing in People With Type 1 Diabetes, JAMA

Piaopiao Li, MS (PhF23), University of Florida

Developing an automated algorithm for identification of children and adolescents with diabetes using electronic health records from the OneFlorida+ clinical research network, Diabetes, Obesity & Metabolism

Piaopiao Li, MS (PhF23), University of Florida

New Alcohol-related Condition Diagnoses Are Associated With Opioid Tapers Among Patients Receiving Long-term Opioid Therapy, Journal of Addiction Medicine

Jarratt Pytell, MD (PhF23), University of Colorado

**Investigation of neuro-regenerative therapeutic potential of nerve composite matrix hydrogels embedded with adipose-derived stem cells, Matrix Biology Plus

Younghye Song, PhD (PhF21), University of Arkansas

**Heterogeneous treatment effects of sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors on risk of dementia in people with type 2 diabetes: A population-based cohort study, Alzheimer's & Dementia

Huilin Tang, MS (PhF23), University of Florida

**Glucagon-Like Peptide-1 Receptor Agonists and Risk for Suicidal Ideation and Behaviors in U.S. Older Adults With Type 2 Diabetes: A Target Trial Emulation Study, Annals of Internal Medicine

Huilin Tang, MS (PhF23), University of Florida

Charlems Alvarez-Jimenez, PhD (PhF24) of Case Western Reserve University is presenting her PhF-funded work "Computational Analysis of Digitized Pre-Treatment Biopsies of Rectal Adenocarcinomas Identifies Tumor Microenvironment Features Associated with Response to Chemoradiation" at the United States and Canadian Academy of Pathology’s 114th Annual Meeting in March. She is also presenting an abstract at the SPIE Medical Imaging 2025 Meeting.

Adam Hedger, PhD (PhF22) started a new job at Korro Bio in Boston as a scientist on the medicinal chemistry team.

Christina Michalski, PhD (PhF23) of Emory University presented a poster on her PhF-funded project "22q11.2 Deletion Syndrome is Associated With an Inflammatory Plasma Signature" at the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology Annual Meeting in December.

Veselina Petrova, PhD (PhF23) of Harvard University was awarded a Leonard and Isabelle Goldenson Fellowship through Harvard Medical School. In addition, based on her discoveries during her PhF fellowship, her lab received a grant from the Massachusetts Center for Alzheimer Therapeutics Science (MassCATS) for which she is the lead researcher.

Stephanie Zawada, MS (PhF23) of Mayo Clinic presented an oral abstract of her PhF-funded project "Tracking Mood Phenotypes in TIA and Ischemic Stroke Patients Using Smartphone Sensors: Preliminary Results from a Real-World Data Pilot Study" at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions in Chicago in November.

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