Dr. Sinha worked together with material science and drug formulation experts at Stanford to develop a thermosensitive delivery system for topical IBD therapies.
Indian-origin physician Sidhartha R. Sinha has been named the recipient of the 2026 Sherman Emerging Leader Prize for his innovative contributions to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) research and patient care.
Sinha, an assistant professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, grew up in Duncan, Oklahoma, a small town near the Texas border.
Guided by mentors and shaped by training in Stanford Biodesign and translational immunology, he has built his career around patients’ unmet needs, looking beyond conventional approaches to find better answers, according to the Sherman Prize website.
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a group of long-term conditions that cause chronic inflammation and damage in the digestive tract.
As a practicing gastroenterologist and researcher specializing in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), a disease without medical cure and whose pathogenesis is incompletely understood, Sinha is keenly aware of the resultant limitations and risks of existing IBD therapies.
One of his earliest examples of this needs-focused approach was as a first-year GI fellow meeting a patient in his 90s with ulcerative colitis (UC) whose disease was confined to the final portion of his colon.
The elderly man had taken oral steroids for decades and was living with severe bone loss and many other side effects. Topical treatments that could have worked were all tried but were too difficult for him to administer and tolerate.
For many physicians, this might have been an unfortunate limitation of the available treatments. For Dr. Sinha, it was a problem worth solving.
The idea for a solution was inspired by an unlikely childhood memory: the chocolate syrup that, when poured over ice cream, hardens on contact. Dr. Sinha envisioned a treatment that could be administered as a liquid, travel proximally to the affected tissue, and then thicken and adhere to where it was needed to deliver medication to the diseased areas.
Turning the concept into a viable treatment required expertise outside medicine and Dr. Sinha’s skill set.
Dr. Sinha worked together with material science and drug formulation experts at Stanford to develop a thermosensitive delivery system for topical IBD therapies. The resulting technology was published in Gastroenterology, licensed by Stanford to a company Dr. Sinha co-founded, and has progressed to human trials.
Sinha is also the Director of Digital Health and Innovation, Director of Digestive Disease Biobank for Precision Medicine, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology; Stanford University School of Medicine.
Each year, three individuals are chosen for recognition by the Sherman Prize Board of Directors, guided by the Sherman Prize Selection Committee — five of the nation’s preeminent IBD researchers, clinicians, scholars and healthcare providers representing diverse areas of expertise.
Two others recognized by the Sherman Prize Board of Directors are Miguel D. Regueiro, Executive Vice President and Enterprise Chief of Staff at the Cleveland Clinic and Bruce E. Sands, Dr. Burrill B. Crohn Professor of Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
The Prizes come with several important forms of recognition: A financial prize and communications that showcase the recipients’ work among colleagues and the greater IBD community.
