Marie Johns and Abishek Wadhwa awarded the 2025-26 Zymeworks Fellowships

By Sarah Anderson, PhD and Emily Cooke

We are excited to extend our congratulations to Marie Johns and Abishek Wadhwa, who have been awarded the 2025-26 Zymeworks Fellowships in Advanced Protein Therapeutics. The award, created in part in recognition of the Nobel laureate Michael Smith, is a partnership between the biotechnology company Zymeworks Inc. and the Michael Smith Laboratories and the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at UBC. Each year, one student from each department is provided a one-year fellowship of $20,000 to support health science research that aligns with Zymeworks’s focus on immune-based treatments for disease. 

At the Zymeworks Fellowship presentation ceremony and seminar on December 17, Paul Moore, Chief Scientific Officer at Zymeworks, shared that fundamental research conducted at UBC forms a critical foundation for breakthroughs that reach patients. “It’s the synergy between academic discoveries and biotechnology that can really push things forward,” he said. 

Fellowship recipient Marie Johns is a medical genetics PhD candidate in Wilfred Jefferies’ lab at the Michael Smith Laboratories. Her research focuses on Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), a progressive brain disorder that currently has no cure. 

Despite previous beliefs that the disease is primarily caused by the buildup of protein plaque, Johns has been able to show that blood vessel dysfunction in the brain plays a significant role in disease progression as well. 

Using advanced transcriptomic approaches to study stem cell-derived models of AD, Johns’ work will uncover further details about the role of blood vessels in disease progression at the molecular level. Knowing these details will allow her to identify potential drug targets— and existing drugs that can reach these targets— for slowing AD progression in the future. 

“Marie's research on Alzheimer's disease could discover unexpected treatment options for patients, and we are pleased to see this groundbreaking work recognized and supported through the Zymeworks Fellowship,” said Jefferies, a professor at the Michael Smith Laboratories, Department of Medical Genetics, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Centre for Blood Research,Vancouver Prostate Centre, and Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health.

Johns reflected on the significance of the Zymeworks Fellowship for her as she moves this research forward in her graduate studies.“Receiving this fellowship is a great encouragement as I continue with my research,” she shared. “It will also help provide much needed financial relief for the rest of my degree, leaving me with a better headstart come graduation.” 

Fellowship recipient Abishek Wadhwa is a fifth-year PhD student in Kenneth Harder’s lab at the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. His research focuses on using lipid nanoparticles, tiny spheres made up of fatty compounds, to encapsulate and deliver mRNA-based therapeutics for cancer. He developed a screening platform that allows researchers to evaluate large libraries of lipid nanoparticles with different structures and identify those that can shuttle mRNA into specific types of immune cells. “Given the pivotal role that the immune system plays in the regulation of diseases including cancer, gaining a mechanistic understanding of lipid nanoparticle-immune cell interactions is essential for engineering effective cancer immunotherapies,” Wadhwa said.   

Wadhwa shared that financial support from the Zymeworks Fellowship will allow him to continue to focus his time and energy on his research and academic training. He is also excited that the fellowship will provide unique opportunities to build relationships with industry partners and to translate his findings to biotechnology settings.   

“Seeing Abishek awarded the Zymeworks Fellowship is both a privilege and a point of immense pride,” said Harder, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. “He has made exceptional contributions to research in the Harder lab and brings remarkable initiative, technical creativity, and scientific rigour to his projects. I am thrilled to see his hard work acknowledged and look forward to the impact he will continue to make in the field.”