The 6^th Guppy Tank Translational Science Pitch Competition, hosted by the ASPET Young Scientists Committee, gives graduate students and postdoctoral fellows the opportunity to work with industry experts to develop and refine a pitch for their research, culminating in competing live at the ASPET annual meeting for the best pitch award. This year’s competition featured four finalists presenting innovative science with strong therapeutic potential before a panel of biotechnology and drug development leaders.

This year’s Best Pitch Award was awarded to Sherouk Tawfik, a PhD candidate at the University of Connecticut, for her pitch titled “Enhancing siRNA Therapeutic Efficacy through Targeted Control of Endosomal Escape.” Sherouk’s work addresses one of the most significant barriers limiting the clinical success of RNA therapeutics: inefficient intracellular delivery. Although siRNA drugs are effectively taken up by cells, more than 99% remain trapped within endosomes, preventing them from reaching the cytoplasm where gene silencing occurs. Sherouk identified Annexin A2 (ANXA2) as a previously unrecognized, druggable regulator of intracellular trafficking that controls the endosomal escape of siRNA therapeutics. This establishes an endogenous delivery-control platform for RNA therapeutics, creating opportunities to improve therapeutic efficacy, predict patient response, and optimize next-generation RNA medicines. Sherouk’s translational pitch, grounded in rigorous mechanistic science and a clear unmet clinical need, exemplified the spirit of the Guppy Tank competition and underscored the importance of next-generation RNA medicine.

The competition also featured a keynote address from Kah Whye Peng, PhD, professor of oncology at Mayo Clinic and co-founder of Vyriad. Her talk, “From Concept to Clinical Testing and Back Again: Engineering Lentiviral Vectors for Efficient CAR-T Generation,” highlighted the translational pathway from therapeutic design to clinical implementation. Dr. Peng’s research focuses on developing virus-based therapeutics for cancer treatment and advancing gene and cell therapies toward clinical application. Her talk offered attendees a candid look at the iterative nature of translational research, providing a roadmap from bench discovery to clinical proof of concept that resonated deeply with the early-career scientists in the audience.