The Jane Coffin Childs Fund for Medical Research Names its 2025 Fellows

Twenty-nine outstanding postdoctoral fellows selected as awardees to distinguished fellowship program in biomedical research.

NEW HAVEN, Conn., June 24, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research (Jane Coffin Childs Fund/JCC Fund) is a leader in biomedical research funding, having committed funding to early-career research leaders for over eighty years.  The JCC Fund supports groundbreaking science by the most promising postdoctoral fellows working in cancer and human disease research.

The Board of Scientific Advisors selected twenty-nine new fellows from the largest applicant pool in the fund's history based on their doctoral research accomplishments, innovative research plans, and their chosen scientific mentors. Awardees are conducting research that will inform our understanding of diseases such as cancer, neurodegeneration and autoimmunity. Projects range from measuring the signals required for a single cell to develop into a pancreatic islet cell to understanding how a cell's energy source, the mitochondria, senses its resources.

"It is an incredibly difficult time for science in the US and postdoctoral fellows are at a very vulnerable career stage. This support from the Jane Coffin Childs Fund comes at a critical moment for these researchers who have already demonstrated that they are outstanding scientists," said Sue Biggins, Ph.D., chair of the JCC Fund's Board of Scientific Advisors. "Our experience has demonstrated that support from the JCC Fund will catalyze the careers of our fellows and lead to major scientific breakthroughs." Biggins is an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and Director of the Basic Sciences Division of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, as well as a former JCC Fund Fellow.

In total, nearly $8M is committed to the 2025 cohort of fellows to provide three years of stipends by the Jane Coffin Childs Fund and its partners, HHMI, The Hope Funds for Cancer Research, The Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Johnson & Johnson, Select Equity Group Foundation and Merck Research Laboratories. The next round of applications for the 2026 cohort will open in October 2025.

"Our goal remains laser-focused: to advance science and those working tirelessly to pursue it," said Anita Pepper, Ph.D., executive director of the JCC Fund. "The revered network of Fellows around the world, our Board of Managers and our Board of Scientific Advisors remain steadfast in our support of these exceptional scientists and welcome them to our community."

The Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research was established by the Childs Family in 1937 to honor the memory of Jane Coffin Childs. Inspired by the founding purpose to support research into the causes and treatment of cancer, the Fund's mission has broadened to support fundamental scientific research that advances our understanding of the causes, treatments, and cures for human disease. More information about the fund and the fellows it supports can be found on the website https://www.jccfund.org/.

SOURCE The Jane Coffin Childs Fund For Medical Research