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Gale and Ira Drukier Prize in Children’s Health Research awarded to pediatric rheumatologist at Boston Children’s Hospital

2025-10-16
(Press-News.org) Dr. Lauren Henderson, a physician-scientist whose research focuses on children with difficult-to-treat juvenile idiopathic arthritis and other autoimmune disorders, has been awarded the 10th annual Gale and Ira Drukier Prize in Children’s Health Research, Weill Cornell Medicine announced today.           

The Drukier Prize honors an early-career pediatrician whose research promises to make important contributions toward improving the health of children and adolescents. Dr. Henderson is an associate professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and a pediatric rheumatologist at Harvard-affiliated Boston Children’s Hospital. She is being recognized for her research exploring how the immune system goes awry in children with autoimmune diseases, particularly juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA), and improving treatments for these children.

Dr. Henderson’s lab studies how T cells in the immune system contribute to inflammation and long-term joint damage in JIA. One of her key discoveries identified the central role of pathogenic T cell-B cell interactions in the arthritic joints of a subgroup of young, female patients with JIA. She also pinpointed a specific immune signal that may help prevent regulatory T cells—which normally control inflammation—from being reprogrammed to act abnormally. She also played a key role in developing national guidelines for conditions like macrophage activation syndrome (MAS) and multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), a serious illness tied to COVID-19. The guidelines have boosted efforts across the United States to provide better care for children facing these life-threatening maladies.     

Dr. Henderson received her award, which carries an unrestricted honorarium, and gave a presentation entitled, “Charting a Research Career in Academic Medicine: A Journey Worth Taking,” at a ceremony on Oct. 16.   

Dr. Crystal Mackall, the Ernest and Amelia Gallo Family Professor and a professor of pediatrics and medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, associate director of the Stanford Cancer Institute and director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at Stanford Medicine, will deliver the Gale and Ira Drukier Lecture in Children’s Health. The lecture highlights research and discoveries that have contributed to remarkable advances in understanding and treating children’s diseases.

Dr. Mackall, whose talk is titled “CAR T Cell Therapies for Pediatric Cancer,” has led an internationally recognized translational research program focused on immune-oncology for more than 30 years. Her work has advanced understanding of fundamental immunology and translated this understanding for the treatment of human disease with a key focus on children’s cancers.

The Drukier Prize and Lecture were established as part of a $25 million gift to Weill Cornell Medicine from Dr. Gale Drukier and Weill Cornell Medicine Board of Fellows member Ira Drukier in December 2014. The gift created the Gale and Ira Drukier Institute for Children’s Health—a premier, cross-disciplinary institute dedicated to accelerating research into the underlying causes of devastating childhood diseases, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.

“Dr. Henderson is an outstanding physician-scientist whose dedication to advancing care for children with intractable forms of arthritis and autoimmune disorders epitomizes why the Drukiers established this prestigious award,” said Dr. Robert A. Harrington, the Stephen and Suzanne Weiss Dean of Weill Cornell Medicine. “We thank the Drukiers for their enduring support and are pleased to recognize Dr. Henderson with this year’s prize.”

“We derive such joy from highlighting impressive physicians and scientists like Dr. Henderson, who work tirelessly to improve children’s health,” the Drukiers said. “Dr. Henderson’s work offers hope to children and families facing juvenile arthritis and other devastating autoimmune diseases, and we look forward to witnessing how her continued efforts benefit these young patients.”

“It’s a tremendous privilege for us to be able to select some of the most visible and successful members of the pediatric research and science community for this award, which also allows us to exchange ideas and generate collaborations throughout the country and worldwide,” said Dr. Virginia Pascual, the Drukier Director of the Gale and Ira Drukier Institute for Children’s Health and the Ronay Menschel Professor of Pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine.

“Dr. Henderson’s work developing clinical guidelines for children with complex autoimmune diseases has had a particularly significant impact,” Dr. Pascual said. “She truly rose to the challenge during the pandemic and became a leader on some of the most important strategies on how to diagnose and treat children with MIS-C, which makes her a phenomenal candidate for the Drukier Prize and this recognition of her talent. We are thrilled to honor her,” Dr. Pascual said.

“I feel so honored and thankful that I’m being recognized for the work I’m doing,” Dr. Henderson said. “This type of award recognizes how important it is to promote high-level research in pediatrics.” 

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the Drukier Institute and Prize—a milestone Dr. Pascual said provokes a sense of “tremendous celebration.” Among the institute’s myriad accomplishments, Dr. Pascual believes its ability to attract new talented investigators—whose work spans a diverse array of childhood diseases, along with vaccine development—stands out.

“The institute has successfully recruited scientists conducting groundbreaking research on the fundamental mechanisms of childhood diseases. A particular focus is understanding immune system development from fetal life through early childhood—critical because immune dysregulation underlies many of these conditions,” she said. “Looking back, we’ve built an exceptional community of researchers deeply committed to translating their expertise into solutions for pediatric diseases.”

Dr. Pascual said she is also proud of the Drukier Institute’s extensive collaboration across Cornell University. “We’re extremely well-integrated in the community and it’s very rewarding to see how our investigators’ projects are blossoming, with papers published in well-regarded scientific journals,” she said. “We’re unquestionably having an impact on pediatric research.”

Starting in 2016, the Drukier Institute has recognized 11 investigators with the Drukier Prize: Drs. Sing Sing Way, Joshua Milner, Vijay Sankaran, Helen Su, Sallie Permar, Stephen Patrick, Erick Forno, Pranita Tamma, Sumit Gupta, Elizabeth Barnert and Henderson.

Dr. Lauren Henderson   

Dr. Henderson’s research, which has been funded by the Rheumatology Research Foundation, Arthritis National Research Foundation, Charles H. Hood Foundation, and other prominent organizations, has also focused on improving treatments for children with severe inflammatory conditions such as hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis and macrophage activation syndrome (MAS). At Boston Children’s, she co-directs the Multidisciplinary Immune Dysregulation and Autoimmunity Syndrome (MIDAS) Clinic and Discovery Program, which brings together experts from many specialties to provide comprehensive care for children with immune system disorders.

Her recent research also uncovered that another type of T cell, called peripheral helper (Tph) cells, are overactive in some children with JIA. These cells promote excessive antibody production, which might be a key driver of inflammation. Her team is investigating whether a newly identified type of regulatory T cells could help control this process, potentially leading to better therapies. Beyond her lab work, she helps oversee a biobank of patient samples that supports research to improve arthritis therapies.                                     

Dr. Henderson earned a medical degree in 2008 and a master’s degree in medical sciences in 2014, both from Harvard Medical School. She then completed a pediatric residency and fellowships in both pediatrics and pediatric rheumatology at Boston Children’s Hospital. She was appointed an attending physician in the hospital’s Division of Immunology in 2015. Dr. Henderson was named research director of the Multidisciplinary Immune Dysregulation and Autoimmunity Clinic in 2022.

She is a member of the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Rheumatology, Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance, and North American Immuno-Hematology Clinical Education and Research Consortium, serving on several committees and task forces. Dr. Henderson also serves as the chair of translational research for the Childhood Arthritis and Rheumatology Research Alliance (CARRA). She has received many prestigious awards, including the Doubler Fellow Award for Excellence in Immunology Research at Boston Children’s, the Pediatric Rheumatology Visiting Professorship from the Rheumatology Research Foundation and the Young Physician-Scientist Award from the American Society for Clinical Investigation.

Dr. Henderson said she hopes her efforts to tease apart the biological drivers of immune dysregulation and JIA will eventually lead to precision medicine approaches that take the guesswork out of treating young patients and predicting their outcomes.

“All of this research is meant to move toward that direction—to understand someone’s disease, what part of their immune system is not working well, and target that so children can enter remission or ultimately come off medications,” she said.

Dr. Crystal Mackall

Dr. Mackall received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Akron and medical degree from Northeast Ohio Medical University. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Society of Clinical Investigation and the American Academy of Physicians. She is also a fellow of the AACR Academy, a body within the American Association for Cancer Research and the Academy of Immuno-oncology.

Dr. Mackall has received numerous awards, including the Lloyd Old Award for outstanding and innovative research in cancer immunotherapy from the Cancer Research Institute, the Smalley Award for outstanding contributions to cancer immunotherapy from the Society for the Immunotherapy of Cancer, the AACR-St. Baldrick’s Distinguished Achievement Award for pediatric cancer research and the Nobility in Science Award from the Sarcoma Foundation of America. She is also co-founder of three companies that focus on cell therapy.

END


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[Press-News.org] Gale and Ira Drukier Prize in Children’s Health Research awarded to pediatric rheumatologist at Boston Children’s Hospital