$3M Breakthrough Prize honors duo whose work changed SCD treatment

One of the $3 million 2026 Breakthrough Prizes — in Life Sciences — has been awarded to two researchers whose discoveries reshaped the treatment of sickle cell disease (SCD).

The award from the Breakthrough Prize Foundation, which counts its mission as “honoring scientists as heroes of our society,” is shared by Stuart H. Orkin, MD, an investigator at the Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center in Massachusetts, and Swee Lay Thein, a hematologist and clinical investigator who serves as the chief of the sickle cell branch of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute in Maryland.