Charles A. Sanders, MD, Partnership Award: Commemorating Steadfast Partners

This award recognizes persons or organizations that have made significant contributions to the FNIH’s work to build, implement, and nurture private-public partnerships in support of the mission of the NIH.
“These outstanding awardees exemplify collaborative biomedical research partnerships. These partnerships show the value of a team science approach to solving some of the toughest health challenges experienced by patients and their families.”
Julie L. Gerberding, MD, MPH, FNIH President and CEO2023 Award Recipients

National Institutes of Health’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
Diana W. Bianchi, M.D., Director of National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the FNIH worked together to manage programs initiated by NICHD’s Global Network for Women’s and Children’s Health Research with additional support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
These collaborations centered on two clinical trials in critical areas of maternal health: The Azithromycin Prevention in Labor Use Study (A-PLUS) and the Prevention of Iron Deficiency Anemia Post-Delivery (PRIORITY) trial.
Dame Emma Walmsley, Chief Executive Officer of GSK
GSK has been a major FNIH partner, supporting more than 35 projects. As longstanding partners of the Biomarkers Consortium, GSK has helped accelerate and advance discovery, development, and regulatory approval for biomarkers that support new drug therapeutics, preventive medicine, and diagnostics.
GSK has supported:
- Accelerating Medicines Partnership® (AMP®) Programs, including a major research program aimed at advancing Alzheimer’s disease treatment.
- Tuberculosis research addressing disease prevalence and improved treatments.
- Families staying at the Edmond J. Safra Family Lodge, which helps guests remain near loved ones being treated at the NIH Clinical Center.
Brian O’Neill
For 20 years, the O’Neill family has partnered with the FNIH to raise visibility and funds for kidney cancer research. The Dean R. O’Neill Renal Cell Cancer Research Fund supports research fellowships in the laboratory of Dr. Richard Childs at the NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute to search for a cure for renal cell carcinoma. To date, fellowships have supported the work of ten distinguished scientists.
Dr. Childs’ group and fellows have:
- Initiated a novel immunotherapy trial exploring the potential of natural killer cell infusions to treat the most advanced form of kidney cancer.
- Discovered that allogeneic stem cell transplants can induce powerful immune effects against kidney cancer that in some cases can lead to sustained regression of metastatic disease.
- Discovered a relic from an ancient virus that integrated into human DNA, leading to a first-in-human clinical trial for kidney cancer.