Dr. Michael Welsh, a longtime University of Iowa physician-scientist, has been named a 2025 recipient of the prestigious Canada Gairdner International Award for pioneering research that led to transformative therapies for cystic fibrosis (CF).
Dr. Welsh, a professor of internal medicine and director of the Pappajohn Biomedical Institute, shares the honor with Dr. Paul Negulescu, senior vice president of Vertex Pharmaceuticals. Together, their work uncovered the molecular mechanisms of CF and enabled the development of drugs that target the disease at its source, improving both life expectancy and quality of life for thousands of patients, a news release states.
The Gairdner Foundation announced the awards April 11. Dr. Welsh will formally accept the honor during a gala ceremony Oct. 23 in Toronto as part of Gairdner Science Week.
“For more than four decades, Dr. Welsh has exemplified the best of biomedical research,” said Denise Jamieson, MD, MPH, dean of the UI Carver College of Medicine, in the release. “His curiosity and collaboration have reshaped our understanding of lung disease and changed lives around the world.”
Dr. Welsh was born in Marshalltown and has spent most of his career at Iowa, where he helped define how mutations in the CFTR gene disrupt protein function and cause the disease. His lab’s discoveries in the 1990s revealed that the CFTR protein is a chloride ion channel and showed how certain mutations, including the most common DF508, impair its function. This foundational work paved the way for targeted therapies.
Dr. Negulescu’s team at Vertex later developed the breakthrough drug Trikafta, a triple-combination therapy that restores CFTR function in nearly 90% of CF patients. Previously, treatments focused only on symptom management.
Cystic fibrosis affects more than 125,000 people worldwide. Once considered a fatal childhood disease, it is now a manageable condition for many patients receiving these newer therapies.
Dr. Welsh holds multiple appointments at the UI and previously served as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. His work has also extended into neurobiology, with implications for conditions like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.
The Gairdner Awards, established in 1957, are among the top honors in global biomedical research. Of the 426 awardees, 102 have gone on to win Nobel Prizes.
