BioUtah Announces 2025 Life Sciences Award Winners Recognizing Utah's Healthcare Innovation Leaders
BioUtah will honor five distinguished individuals and companies at the 2025 Mayer Brown Utah Life Sciences Summit for their transformative contributions to healthcare innovation and economic growth in Utah's life sciences sector.
The 2025 BioUtah Life Sciences Awards will recognize five leaders, innovators, and companies that have made significant contributions to Utah's life sciences industry during the upcoming Mayer Brown Utah Life Sciences Summit on November 12. The awards ceremony will take place during the summit's morning plenary session at the Hilton Salt Lake City Center Hotel, celebrating achievements that demonstrate the state's growing prominence in healthcare innovation.
Wesley Sundquist, PhD, Samuels Professor and Chair of the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Utah, receives recognition for his decades of research on HIV assembly and replication. His groundbreaking work led directly to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's approval of Lenacapavir in June 2025, a preventive HIV drug developed by Gilead Sciences using his findings. Sundquist's distinguished career includes numerous honors, including the Horwitz Prize for Biochemistry and inclusion on the TIME100 2025 list of most influential people.
Fred Lampropoulos, Executive Chairman of Merit Medical Systems, is being honored for his visionary leadership in building the South Jordan-based company since its formation in 1987. Under his guidance, Merit Medical Systems has grown to over $1.5 billion in revenue and expanded globally while maintaining its Utah headquarters. Lampropoulos holds more than 500 domestic and international patents and applications on medical devices, demonstrating his commitment to developing life-changing technologies.
Shawn Fojtik, CEO of Distal Access, receives recognition for his entrepreneurial spirit and innovation drive, resulting in over 100 combined issued and pending patents across multiple companies he has founded. His intellectual property contributions span cardiovascular devices, embolic technologies, thrombectomy systems, and electrophysiology equipment, with more than one million safe-patient uses anticipated to grow tenfold. Fojtik's technology has resulted in more than 10 successful exits to third-party companies that have commercialized his inventions.
Nusano, based in West Valley City, is being recognized for developing a revolutionary platform for targeted cancer therapies using radioisotopes that deliver precise radiation directly to tumor cells while sparing healthy tissue. The company's proprietary technology can produce more than 40 different isotopes for both advanced diagnostic imaging and next-generation cancer treatments. Nusano's work is attracting other life sciences companies to Utah, including Ratio Therapeutics and PharmaLogic, helping build an innovation ecosystem that accelerates cancer research and creates high-quality jobs.
University of Utah President Taylor Randall receives acknowledgment for his partnership and support in advancing Utah's life sciences ecosystem through initiatives like the Life Sciences Workforce Initiative and the establishment of the University of Utah Venture Fund. His administration has focused on transforming university research into practical applications that benefit both society and the state's economy, including the development of the Eccles Health Campus and the James LeVoy Sorenson Center for Medical Innovation. To register for the summit and learn more about the award winners visit utahlifesciencessummit.com.