A UT Southwestern Medical Center professor is one of five recipients of a $500,000 research prize funded by Dallas-based Lyda Hill Philanthropies designed to advance “high-risk, high-reward” ideas, according to a Monday press release.
Molecular genetics professor Russell DeBose-Boyd won a 2024 Hill Prize in the biological sciences category, the Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science and Technology and Lyda Hill Philanthropies announced. In its inaugural year, the Hill Prize rewards Texas innovators, with the aim of helping them take their ideas from research to real-world impact.
DeBose-Boyd studies drugs called statins, which lower blood cholesterol levels. More than 200 million people worldwide take statins for their heart health, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. DeBose-Boyd’s research seeks to understand statins’ side effects and explore ways to make the drugs more effective.
The prize money will advance his work using genetically modified mice to understand why some people who take statins experience muscle pain. His work also studies an enzyme that affects cholesterol production.
“This allows us to really push forward on a very important — and I should mention, a very expensive — project,” DeBose-Boyd said of the award in an interview with The Dallas Morning News.
The other four prize recipients were Dr. Martin Matzuk from Baylor College of Medicine; Maria Croyle and Allan MacDonald from the University of Texas at Austin; and Hermann Lebit, founder of Alma Energy, which partners with researchers at the University of Texas at El Paso. The recipients were recognized for research ideas in the fields of medicine, engineering, physical sciences and technology.
Lyda Hill Philanthropies has pledged over $10 million to continue the prizes for the next three years, including in a sixth category for public health. The organization will also allocate at least $1 million to applicants whose projects are not selected as winners.
“Our organization is committed to funding game-changing advances in science and nature and that is exactly what the Hill Prizes’ mission is,” said Lyda Hill, a Dallas entrepreneur and founder of Lyda Hill Philanthropies, in a statement. “We hope that the funding awarded to these Texas scientists will help enable them to launch their pivotal research into development and continue to make advancements in scientific innovation.”
Texas Academy of Medicine, Engineering, Science and Technology was co-founded in 2004 by former Texas senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and two Nobel laureates, Dr. Michael Brown and Richard Smalley. The academy unites Texas’ brightest scientific minds to advance research and has over 300 members.
Adithi Ramakrishnan is a science reporting fellow at The Dallas Morning News. Her fellowship is supported by the University of Texas at Dallas. The News makes all editorial decisions.
