Donald Patrick McDonnell, PhD, has been awarded the Endocrine Society’s John D. Baxter Prize for Entrepreneurship for discovering hormone therapies for treating breast and prostate cancer, the Society announced today.
The John D. Baxter Prize for Entrepreneurship was established to recognize the extraordinary achievement of bringing an idea, product, service, or process to market. This work ultimately elevates the field of endocrinology and positively impacts the health of patients.
McDonnell is a professor at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, N.C., where his lab does translational research to help treat and cure breast and prostate cancers.
He is being awarded the Society’s Baxter Prize for his research on the molecular basis of the nuclear receptor (NR) action and his involvement in the discovery and development of drugs for use in the treatment of breast and prostate cancers as well as other conditions dependent on steroid hormones.
“Dr. McDonnell is a world-leading scientist, innovator and entrepreneur in the field of endocrinology and a richly deserving winner of the Society’s Baxter Prize. He has played a major role in developing endocrine therapies for breast and prostate cancers and has a special ability to move his discoveries from the lab to the clinic,” says Endocrine Society President John Newell-Price, MD, PhD, FRCP. “I look forward to seeing future translational research from his lab as his team strives to discover new therapeutics, whilst also repurposing existing drugs to treat or prevent endocrine cancers.”
Leveraging findings from fundamental research into estrogen action in breast cancer, McDonnell developed a mechanism-based drug discovery platform that he used to identify bazedoxifene, lasofoxifene, etacstil, and elacestrant as treatments for metastatic breast cancer. Elacestrant received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2023 and lasofoxifene is in phase III clinical trials in the ELAINE studies.
His work has also led to the discovery of novel treatments for prostate cancer, and a start-up company that he cofounded, Adara Therapeutics, is currently developing these drugs.
“I’m honored to be the recipient of the Society’s 2025 Baxter Award and look forward to celebrating with all of my colleagues at ENDO 2025. I knew John Baxter very well, and he and I had the same love of translational research,” McDonnell says. “I plan to leverage this prize to continue my work in the field to find better treatments for endocrine cancers.”
McDonnell will receive the Baxter Prize at the Society’s annual meeting ENDO 2025, which will take place July 12-15, in San Francisco, Calif. The $50,000 prize is awarded biennially to recognize scientists or healthcare practitioners who have demonstrated entrepreneurship by leveraging endocrine research to improve patient care.
The Baxter Prize was established in memory of Endocrine Society Past President John D. Baxter, MD, who was a world-renowned scientist known for being the first to clone the human growth hormone gene. During his career, he made many fundamental medical discoveries and translated them into clinical therapies that had far-reaching implications in the fields of biotechnology and genetic engineering, benefiting the health and welfare of patients worldwide. He passed away in 2011. The Baxter family endowed the prize in his memory.
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