Richard Gregory Receives Pershing Square Lotus Award

Richard Gregory, PhD, has been awarded a 2026 Lotus Award from the Pershing Square Foundation to evaluate the therapeutic potential of a new treatment for ovarian cancer. He joins seven other scientists across the country selected for their pioneering work to advance innovative ovarian cancer research.

Ovarian cancer is the deadliest gynecologic malignancy in the United States. Despite its high rate of mortality, ovarian cancer remains one of the most understudied and underfunded cancers. With the Lotus Award program, the Pershing Square Foundation aims to counter this deficiency, and drive meaningful advances in detection and treatment of ovarian cancer to improve outcomes for patients.

Gregory’s approach builds on his lab’s discovery a decade ago identifying the mRNA methyltransferase METTL3 as a novel oncogene (Lin et al. Molecular Cell, 2016). METTL3 is aberrantly activated in many cancers, including ovarian cancer, and reprograms gene expression to drive oncogenic processes, including tumor growth, therapeutic resistance and immune evasion.

METTL3 inhibition represents a new therapeutic approach for cancer. The first-in-class small-molecule METTL3 inhibitor STC-15 has been found to induce tumor regression in Phase 1 clinical trials, and is currently being evaluated in Phase 1b/2 trials for patients with sarcomas and selected advanced cancers.

The goal of Gregory’s Lotus Award project is to define METTL3’s role in ovarian cancer progression and therapy resistance, and to determine whether STC-15 can suppress ovarian cancer cell growth and re-sensitize therapy-resistant ovarian cancer cells to chemotherapy. In collaboration with fellow MCCB researcher, Marcus Ruscetti, PhD, he will also investigate whether combining STC-15 with immune checkpoint inhibitors enhances anti-tumor immune responses and improves the effectiveness of immunotherapy for ovarian cancer.

For more information, read the Pershing Square Foundation’s press release.