The Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Research Alliance has awarded USD 9 million across 13 early-career investigators through the 2026 Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Prize, doubling the number of recipients from prior cycles and extending eligibility from the New York metropolitan area to institutions across the United States. Each awardee receives USD 750,000 in unrestricted philanthropic funding through a program administered by the Pershing Square Foundation, which has committed a cumulative USD 58 million to 90 scientists at 24 institutions since 2013.
The 2026 cohort spans a range of preclinical and translational oncology approaches, with several projects centered on cell therapy engineering, targeted protein degradation, RNA biology, and AI-assisted protein design. Caleb Lareau at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center is using generative AI to design protein constructs intended to absorb chemotherapy agents outside of tumor tissue, a strategy aimed at reducing systemic toxicity and enabling higher dosing. Fleur Ferguson at the University of California, San Diego is developing what her lab terms activity-dependent degraders, a class of compounds designed to selectively eliminate hyperactivated, cancer-driving protein forms while leaving normal tissue counterparts intact.
Three awardees are working within the CAR-T and engineered immune cell space. Santiago Correa at Columbia University is developing injectable biomaterials that recreate lymph node-like microenvironments to support CAR-T cell persistence after infusion. Robbie Majzner at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is engineering CAR-T constructs that require multiple tumor-specific signals before activating, a design intended to reduce off-tumor toxicity in solid tumor indications including glioblastoma. Livnat Jerby at Stanford University is redesigning immune cell sensing receptors to improve tumor localization and restrict activation to tumor-specific signals.
Other projects address upstream biology and tumor microenvironment mechanisms. Aparna Bhaduri at the University of California, Los Angeles has built human organoid systems designed to preserve glioblastoma tumor complexity and immune interactions, which she will use to identify cell populations driving growth and resistance. Fei Chen at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has developed a molecular recording technology called TimeVault that allows cells to log their gene expression history before and after treatment, with the goal of identifying early survival programs in rare therapy-resistant tumor cells. Benjamin Sabari at the University of Texas Southwestern is studying how cancer-causing fusion proteins form abnormal condensates that drive pro-tumorigenic gene expression, with a focus on disrupting these structures in cancers that have historically lacked druggable targets.
Two awardees are examining how the tumor microenvironment and systemic biology influence cancer progression and immune response. Marcus Ruscetti at UMass Chan Medical School is investigating how senescent cells in the liver create an immune-suppressive environment that facilitates pancreatic cancer metastasis, and will test nanoparticle-based approaches to eliminate those cells and improve immunotherapy responses. Natasha Pavlova at the University of Utah is examining how nutrient deprivation in tumors alters protein production, causing cells to generate altered protein variants from glutamine-rich sequences that may represent new therapeutic vulnerabilities.