Danny Khalil, MD, PhD, medical oncologist and immunotherapy specialist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), has won a 2025 Scholar-Innovator Award from the Harrington Discovery Institute.
Harrington Discovery Institute Scholar-Innovator Awards support the development of breakthrough new treatments for cancer as well as cardiovascular, inflammatory, and infectious diseases, using small molecule, nucleic acid, cell-based, and genetic therapies.
Dr. Khalil’s award will support his development of a cancer medicine that converts tumors into active therapies. The medicine turns tumors into manufacturing sites of specific anti-tumor T cells. These cells then circulate to regress both localized and metastatic cancers, and persist to prevent recurrence.
“A cancer will often divert normal features of the body to support its growth; here, we divert features of the cancer to create a more precise treatment,” explained Dr. Khalil. “As an off-the-shelf therapeutic vaccine, this approach avoids the need to identify and manufacture patient-specific components, reducing costs and making the treatment broadly applicable.”
The Harrington Discovery Institute selects ten Scholar-Innovators annually. Winners receive grant funding along with drug and business development guidance. Scholars benefit from access to Harrington’s mission-aligned commercial entities, including the Advent-Harrington Impact Fund and its charitable partner Morgan Stanley GIFT Cures.
“I am grateful for the opportunity to work with the Harrington Discovery Institute. Their invaluable expertise will help us select additional partners and bring this new medicine to cancer patients as effectively as possible,” said Dr. Khalil.
With earlier support from the Tri-Institutional Therapeutics Discovery Institute (TRI-I TDI) and the MSK Technology Development Investment Fund (TDIF), Dr. Khalil’s body of work is largely focused on developing next-generation immunotherapy drugs (e.g., cancer vaccines, cell therapies, and novel monoclonal antibodies). By targeting fundamental mechanisms of immune tolerance, these drugs are designed to treat diverse advanced cancers including pancreatic, colorectal, prostate, liver, and breast cancer.
Dr. Khalil joins other 2025 awardees including Leonard Zon and George Daley, the Dean of Harvard Medical School; as well as past winners such as luminaries Barry Coller and Stanley Cohen. For more on the Harrington Institute and its 2025 awards, see here.
Dr. Khalil works with Zariel Johnson, Senior Licensing Manager in the MSK Office of Entrepreneurship and Commercialization (johnsonz@mskcc.org), who manages the commercialization and IP strategy for his innovations.