Post by Harvard Medical School

Stuart Orkin, the Harvard Medical School David G. Nathan Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children's Hospital, has been awarded the 2026 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences. He shares the award with Swee Lay Thein, senior investigator and chief of the Sickle Cell Branch of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health. Orkin and Thein received the award for determining the mechanism behind the body’s transition from fetal hemoglobin to adult hemoglobin and validating its potential as a therapeutic target for two major inherited diseases: sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia. Their work has led to life-changing new therapies, including the world’s first CRISPR medicine for sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia. Read more about their work: https://bit.ly/3OqLRhH