Three out of the six winners of the 2025 Molecular Therapeutics Initiative (MTI) Innovator Awards are Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute (HWNI) faculty members: Ehud Isacoff, Jim Hurley, and James Olzmann. The awards are given by theMTI at UC Berkeley to scientists with transformative approaches to therapeutic discovery. Each awardee will receive $90,000 in research funding as well as customized support from MTI’s advanced drug discovery and medicinal chemistry platforms.
Their projects are:
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Ehud Isacoff, professor of neuroscience and of molecular and cell biology, Evan Rauch Chair in Neuroscience, and director of HWNI
Designing a novel high-throughput FRET-based screening platform to identify modulators of glutamate receptors for the treatment of depression, enabling discovery of faster-acting, more targeted antidepressants.
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Jim Hurley, professor of molecular and cell biology
Developing selective inhibitors using advanced cryo-EM-guided medicinal chemistry to create targeted therapies for tumors with specific chromosome deletions.
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James Olzmann, professor of molecular and cell biology and of nutritional sciences and toxicology, along withRumi Sherriff, a PhD candidate in HWNI member Michael Rapé’s lab
Discovering molecular glues that restore degradation of cancer-promoting mutant proteins by enhancing their recognition, offering a precision therapeutic strategy for aggressive cancers with degron mutations.