The Fort Worth-based Rainwater Charitable Foundation—one of the largest funders of neurodegenerative research advancing discoveries for diseases caused by tau protein accumulations in the brain—has announced its 2025 Rainwater Prize recipients.

Kaj Blennow, M.D., Ph.D., a professor and chief physician in the department of psychiatry and neurochemistry at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, will be awarded the 2025 Outstanding Innovation in Neurodegenerative Research Prize and will receive $400,000. 

Bess Frost, Ph.D., a professor of molecular biology, cell biology, and biochemistry at Providence, Rhode Island’s Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, will be awarded the 2025 Rainwater Prize for Innovative Early-Career Scientist and will receive $200,000.

The researchers will be honored at the 2025 Tau Global Conference in London on April 24-25, 2025, the foundation said.

“We’re thrilled to honor these deserving researchers with this year’s Rainwater Prize for their impactful contributions within the field of neurodegenerative disease,” Jeremy Smith, president of the Rainwater Charitable Foundation (RCF), said in a statement. “We’re dedicated to spotlighting novel research efforts, and we hope that by better understanding the complexities of tau pathology, we will see more treatment options for patients with primary tauopathies, like Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP), and other neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.”

Developing diagnostic tools for Alzheimer’s

Blennow has played “an instrumental role” in the development of early clinical diagnostic tools for Alzheimer’s disease via blood and CSF biomarkers and tau pathology, the foundation said. The Swedish researcher is the principal author on the original publications for the development of analytical methods for the three core Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers, including total tau (T-tau), β-amyloid 1-42 (Aβ42), and phosphorylated tau (P-tau). 

His other breakthroughs include using the Simoa technique to measure plasma Aβ42 and T-tau, and the development and clinical validation of new immunoassays and mass spectrometry methods for key P-tau variants.

“It’s a great honor to be recognized by the Rainwater Charitable Foundation and receive this special award,” Blennow said in a statement. “The prize encourages me to continue exploring Alzheimer’s disease and other tauopathies, helping further our understanding of neurodegenerative diseases and tau pathology in the brain.”

Understanding the impact of tau toxicity spread—and “jumping genes”

Frost’s discoveries “have changed our understanding of neurodegenerative diseases and the toxicity caused by tau protein in the brain,” the foundation said, with her breakthrough findings showing that “tau toxicity can spread through cells similar to prion diseases, which occur when proteins in the body are misfolded.”

Frost and her lab have also revealed how retrotransposons—DNA sequences known as “jumping genes”—are activated in Alzheimer’s disease and other tauopathies, and how this process causes cognitive decline.

“These findings have launched new clinical trials, including Dr. Frost’s own open label Phase IIa trial targeting retrotransposon activation in patients at early stages of Alzheimer’s disease,” the foundation said.

Frost said her $200,000 award will allow her team “to broaden our scope regarding retrotransposon activation in tauopathy and devote more effort to developing potential treatments. It’s an exciting time to study neurodegeneration, and this support will help us move faster and go further in our research.”

For more info on the Rainwater Charitable Foundation and current and past Rainwater Prize winners, you can go here.

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