The Rita Allen Foundation has named its 2025 class of Rita Allen Foundation Scholars, celebrating seven early-career leaders in the biomedical sciences whose research holds exceptional promise for revealing new pathways to advance human health.
The selected Scholars will receive grants of up to $110,000 annually for up to five years to conduct innovative research in neuroscience, cancer, immunology, and pain. The topics they will pursue include: the impact of transposable genetic elements on disease; mechanisms of non-genetic inheritance; using “molecular movies” to learn about protein production and how it can break down in disease; exploring stubborn problems of immunology using a comparative evolutionary analysis; ways to eliminate protein targets to develop new pain therapies; how maternal immunity is transferred through milk; and how pain information is processed in the spinal cord.
“We are honored to welcome this remarkable group of scientists to the Rita Allen Foundation Scholars community at a time when scientific research faces unprecedented challenges. For nearly five decades, our Foundation has supported bold visionaries tackling fundamental questions in biomedical science, from treating cancer and neurological diseases to understanding persistent pain,” said Elizabeth Good Christopherson, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Rita Allen Foundation. “As the research landscape continues to evolve with new complexities, these scholars represent exceptional talent and determination to pursue groundbreaking work that will ultimately improve human health. Their commitment to exploring the unknown gives us great hope for the future of medicine and the millions of lives their discoveries may touch.”
Since 1976, the Rita Allen Foundation has invested in more than 200 biomedical scientists at the early stages of their careers, enabling them to pursue research with above-average risk and promise. Scholars have gone on to make fundamental contributions to their fields of study and have won recognition including the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the National Medal of Science, the Wolf Prize in Medicine, the Lasker-Koshland Special Achievement Award in Medical Science, and the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.
Five of the 2025 Scholars were nominated by research institutions across the United States for their promising work in the fields of neuroscience, cancer, and immunology, and were selected by the Rita Allen Foundation’s Scientific Advisory Committee of leading scientists and clinicians.
The two investigators selected to receive the Rita Allen Foundation Scholars Award in Pain were chosen by a review committee of the U.S. Association for the Study of Pain (USASP), including previous Rita Allen Pain Scholars and other leaders in the field. Offered in partnership with USASP, the Rita Allen Foundation Scholars Award in Pain supports investigators whose research on the biology of pain holds exceptional promise for revealing new pathways to understand and treat pain conditions.
The seven pioneering early-career researchers selected as 2025 Rita Allen Foundation Scholars are:
Martin Taylor, Brown University; Milton E. Cassel Scholar
Alexander Chamessian, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis; Award in Pain
Allan-Hermann Pool, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; Award in Pain
Alex Johnson, Brandeis University
Christopher Lapointe, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
Deepshika Ramanan, Salk Institute for Biological Studies
Lamia Wahba, The Rockefeller University