Penn Medicine and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s autism institute awarded its inaugural Nancy Lurie Marks Prize to a geneticist last week.
The Lurie Autism Institute presented its $100,000 award to Huda Zoghbi, a professor at the Baylor College of Medicine and the director of the Duncan Neurological Research Institute at Texas Children’s Hospital. The prize is the institute’s “highest honor,” and recognized Zoghbi for her discovery that variants of the MECP2 gene lead to Rett syndrome, a neurodevelopmental disorder related to autism.
Zoghbi also demonstrated the role of “de novo” mutations — genetic variants not present in an individual’s parents — in the syndrome.
In a written statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian, Zoghbi described the motivations behind her work, citing the “heart-wrenching” prognosis of patients with Rett syndrome — who are almost exclusively female.
“These girls all started life healthy and socially interactive,” she wrote. “And then suddenly they become silent, withdrawn, and develop repetitive hand wringing.”
Zoghbi also reflected on the challenges of early autism genetics research, noting that initial efforts focused primarily on familial cases.
“When I was pursuing the gene that causes Rett syndrome, a sporadic disorder, the search for autism genes was focused on familial cases where there might be two or more children affected,” Zoghbi wrote. “Such families were rare, thus, progress was slow.”
She explained that her team’s discoveries helped show that “perhaps one does not need families to find the genetic causes of autism.”
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The principles that Zoghbi established for autism research have since guided genomic studies of autism risk, including in frameworks adopted by the Simons Foundation Powering Autism Research for Knowledge and the Autism Sequencing Consortium.
Her “breakthrough transformed” the syndrome “from an enigmatic clinical condition into a foundational model for understanding autism genetics and neurobiology,” according to Penn Medicine.
“We couldn’t think of a more deserving inaugural recipient who exemplifies the pioneering work in autism research that the Lurie Autism Institute wants to make possible,” Frances E. Jensen, co-chair of the prize selection committee, wrote in the release.
Interim Director of the Lurie Autism Institute Daniel Rader similarly emphasized Zoghbi’s “central role in advancing” the current understanding of neurobiology, and translating that “basic science” into real clinical progress.
Zoghbi wrote to the DP that she hopes to use the prize to support initiatives that advance research and careers “dedicated to solving neurodevelopmental disorders.”
“It is critical that we invest in research that uncovers the root causes, and develop therapies that improve the lives of all those touched by these disorders,” she wrote.
Zoghbi will deliver a lecture at the 2026 Lurie Autism Institute Symposium on May 7, when she will be formally honored for the award.
She wrote to the DP that aspiring scientists today are “extraordinarily lucky to be entering biomedical research at this moment in history.”
“The barriers that once slowed discovery are falling away, one breakthrough at a time,” she wrote. “We are living through a scientific renaissance, and you get to be part of it.”
The Lurie Autism Institute was launched in June 2025 after Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie donated $50 million to Penn Medicine and CHOP.
The prize is named after Nancy Lurie Marks, who established the Nancy Lurie Marks Family Foundation in 1977 to support autistic individuals. Contributions to the institute were also made by the Eagles Autism Foundation, which was created in 2018 by Jeffrey Lurie.
The institute is one of several research efforts at Penn focused on autism, including a 2025 National Institutes of Health grant awarded to CHOP and Penn Medicine to study the roles of genetic and environmental factors in autism risk.
