The Infosys Prize 2026 in Life Sciences is awarded to Prof. Isha Jain for her pioneering discoveries in oxygen biology, which showed that tissue damage in some mitochondrial diseases arises from excess oxygen rather than energy failure, and for turning fundamental biochemical insights into new therapeutic strategies, including designing a small-molecule to reduce oxygen levels and vitamin-based treatments for inherited metabolic disorders.
Scope and Impact of Work
Oxygen is essential for life, yet too much of it is as harmful as too little. Prof. Isha Jain's research asks how cells and organisms sense and adapt to oxygen, and how an imbalance causes disease. Her doctoral work transformed thinking about oxygen in mitochondrial disorders, a group of devastating and largely untreatable conditions. Using genome-wide CRISPR screens and mouse models, she showed that a defective electron transport chain leaves oxygen unused, so tissues become hyperoxic (oxygen-overloaded), and that breathing reduced oxygen dramatically extended survival in a model of Leigh syndrome. A clinical trial of inhaled hypoxia was initiated soon after.
In her own laboratory, Prof. Jain has uncovered the mechanisms underlying this framework. She found that excess oxygen destabilizes iron–sulfur cluster proteins, triggering a cycle of mounting damage. She mapped how the heart, brain, liver and kidney redistribute glucose and fatty acids during acute and chronic hypoxia, with implications for stroke and heart attack. Recognizing that continuous gas therapy is impractical, her team developed an oral small molecule that increases hemoglobin's affinity for oxygen and reversed advanced disease in mice.
Isha Jain has also opened a new direction in nutritional genomics, systematically identifying genetic diseases that respond to vitamins B2 and B3. Vitamin B3 therapy extended lifespan more than forty-fold in a mouse model of NAXD deficiency, a fatal pediatric disorder. By uniting genetics, metabolism, physiology and pharmacology, she has shown how fundamental discovery can open direct paths to treatment.
Bio
Isha Jain is Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, an Associate Investigator at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, and a Core Investigator at the Arc Institute. She received her A.B. in Chemical and Physical Biology from Harvard University in 2012, and her Ph.D. in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics from the Harvard–MIT Health Sciences and Technology program in 2017.
Prof. Jain launched her independent laboratory at UCSF in 2018 as a Sandler Faculty Fellow. Her honors include the Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award (2017), the NIH Director's Early Independence Award (2018), the Searle Scholar Award (2021), the Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship Award in Neuroscience (2021), the Mallinckrodt Award (2021), and the Arc Innovation Investigator Award (2023).
Prof. Isha Jain is an inventor with patents for hypoxia-based and vitamin-based therapies and has an active record of institutional and professional service.
Timeline
Jury Citation
Prof. Isha Jain is recognized for studies establishing oxygen as a finely regulated variable in physiology and disease. As a doctoral student, she overturned the view that mitochondrial disease stems from energy failure, demonstrating instead that unused oxygen builds to toxic levels and that mild hypoxia prevents and even reverses neurodegeneration in a mouse model of Leigh syndrome, a severe neurometabolic disorder. In her independent laboratory, Prof. Jain revealed how excess oxygen causes damage by destabilizing iron–sulfur cluster proteins, and how organs rewire fuel use under low oxygen. Her team then developed HypoxyStat, an orally administered small molecule that lowers oxygen levels and reverses advanced disease in mice. Most recently, Jain’s nutritional genomics approach has identified genetic diseases treatable with vitamins, including vitamin B3 for NAXD deficiency. Her work exemplifies the passage from surprising observation via fundamental biochemical principle to therapeutic intervention.
Isha Jain
On behalf of the jury, I warmly congratulate Isha Jain on receiving the Infosys Prize 2026 in Life Sciences. With creativity and insight, her work has revealed oxygen as a powerful lever in health and disease. Her surprising discovery that reduced oxygen levels can be beneficial in mitochondrial disorders has led to fundamental mechanisms of oxygen utilization and potential therapies for these devastating disorders. We look forward to the advances her work will bring for human health.
