Dallas, May 5: Benjamin Sabari, Ph.D., Assistant Professor in the Cecil H. and Ida Green Center for Reproductive Biology Sciences and of Molecular Biology and Obstetrics and Gynecology at UT Southwestern Medical Center, has been selected for a 2026 Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Prize. Awarded annually to a minimum of six scientists, the prize provides $250,000 per year for three years to enable researchers to pursue novel and innovative cancer research at a stage when traditional funding is lacking.
The Sabari Lab studies the roles in health and disease of biomolecular condensates, dynamic networks of interacting proteins within cells that help control when genes are turned on and off. In 2023, Dr. Sabari and his colleagues showed that chemical features of some parts of proteins known as intrinsically disordered regions encourage these proteins to join together into biomolecular condensates. A study the team published two years later reported that some fusion proteins – mutant proteins caused by the melding of two genes – drive select cancers by confining an enzyme called RNA polymerase II within biomolecular condensates.
Discovering ways to inhibit this process could lead to new treatments for some cancers by allowing researchers to control the behavior of specific oncogenes, genes that encourage the development and spread of cancer, Dr. Sabari explained.
“The Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Prize will empower my lab to pursue a high-risk, high-reward direction that existing funding mechanisms are not designed to support: developing new strategies to target the unique multivalent molecular organization of oncogenic transcription rather than generally inhibiting transcription,” he said. “If successful, this work will establish a new paradigm for treating cancers driven by dysregulation of gene transcription.”
Dr. Sabari joined the faculty at UT Southwestern in 2020. He was a Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Whitehead Institute. He earned his bachelor’s degree in molecular genetics from the University of Rochester and his doctoral degree at The Rockefeller University as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. He is a member of the Cellular Networks in Cancer Research Program in the Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center at UT Southwestern.
The Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Prize is funded by the Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Research Alliance, formed in 2013 by The Pershing Square Foundation. The Alliance is dedicated to accelerating cures for cancer by supporting innovative cancer research and facilitating collaborations between academia and industry. Previously awarded only to cancer research scientists and physician-scientists based in the greater New York City area, the Prize became open to scientists across the U.S. this year.
