Press ReleasesPrint this page

CIMIT Announces $5 Million in Medical Research Grants

Major awards go to projects targeting sepsis, breast cancer

CIMIT has announced that it will commit more than $5 million to 28 medical research teams for FY2009, including four major grants worth $500,000 each.

The grants will go to multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary teams that are developing innovative early-stage medical devices or clinical systems. This year there was a record 188 applications for funding.

The key goal of this CIMIT grant program is to bring together clinicians and engineers, often from different institutions, to accelerate medical innovation so that better care can be delivered to patients more quickly. The four major grants will be funded over a two-year period.

“We were very impressed by the quality of proposals,” said selection committee chair Steven Schachter, MD, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “Teams brought together by these grants have the chance to make a major difference in innovative medicine.”

Several major grants will support research on sepsis, a condition marked by the presence of pathogenic organisms or toxins in the blood or tissues. Infection of the blood due to sepsis is a leading cause of death in infants and adults, as well as soldiers on the battlefield. Infectious pathogens, such as bacteria and fungi, can grow in the blood and body tissues and produce toxins that elicit inflammatory reactions that result in multi-organ failure and eventually can cause death.

One grant to battle sepsis will go to a team headed by Donald Ingber, MD, PhD, of Children’s Hospital Boston, who will be developing a microfluidic blood cleansing device for sepsis therapy. This project focuses on development of a microdevice that effectively functions as an “artificial spleen” that can cleanse flowing blood of pathogens when a portion of the patient’s blood is temporarily removed from the body through a catheter, passed through a device and returned to another blood vessel.

This research team includes representatives from several CIMIT institutions, including Mark Puder, MD, PhD, of CHB; Jay M. Wilson, MD, of CHB; Jason Fiering, MS, of the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory; and Chong Wing Yung, PhD, CHB.

Also to receive a large grant to focus on biodetection and sepsis control is Utkan Demirci, PhD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, who is to develop a disposable filter-based microfluidic chip for HIV CD4 monitoring at resource-limited settings such as medical facilities in emerging countries. Other investigators are Ali Khademhosseini, PHD, MS, BWH, and Daniel Kuritzkes, MD, BWH.

Another team to be funded in the large grant category is one headed by Mehmet Toner, PhD, of Massachusetts General Hospital. His team will be developing a label-free viral detection microchip for point-of-care applications that will enable rapid testing for viruses like HIV and influenza in a doctor’s office, ambulance or battlefield. Other researchers on the team are William Rodriquez, MD, MGH; Scott Manalis, PhD, MIT; and Rahul Sarpeshkar, PhD, MIT.

A fourth major grant will be given to Yolonda Colson, MD, PhD, of BWH. She will be developing new nanoparticle technology for tumor-targeted drug delivery to prevent lymph-node metastases in breast cancer. Her research seeks to impact the treatment of breast cancer by eliminating early metastatic disease within regional lymph nodes. Collaborating is Mark Grinstaff, PhD, of Boston University.

Smaller grants awarded

In addition to the large grants, CIMIT will fund 24 other awards, ranging from $40,000 to $135,000 each. Earlier this year CIMIT awarded a $2.1 million special project grant to a team researching NOTES, natural orifice translumenal endoscopic surgery.

“We are determined to help improve healthcare,” said John Parrish, MD, executive director of CIMIT. “By supporting promising early-stage research, we are enabling clinicians and engineers to work together to discover innovative methods to provide better treatment more quickly.”

Other grants will go to the following principal investigators, who are working with clinicians and engineers from institutions other than their own:

• Peter Bergethon, PhD, Boston University, multi-optode probe for evaluation of diabetic neuropathy
• Sydney Cash, MD, PhD, MGH, microelectrode recordings and advanced algorithms for seizure prediction
• Gerald Denis, PhD, Boston University, ultra-sound-directed delivery of cancer chemotherapeutic drugs
• Fiona Fennessy, PhD, BWH, computer-assisted tumor blood vessel tortuosity analysis at 3T, as a method of assessing ablative therapy response
• Felipe Fregni, MD, PhD, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the effect of transcranial direct current stimulation combined with arm training using glove-ARMEO robotic device on motor recovery in traumatic brain injury survivors

Also to receive grants are:

• Michael Hamblin, PhD, MGH, transcranial NIR light for traumatic brain injury
• Nobuhiko Hata, PhD, BWH, swimming capsule endoscope
• Judy Hung, MD, PhD, MGH, polymer injection for treatment of ischemic mitral regurgitation
• David Kaplan, PhD, Tufts University, long-term drug release for epilepsy treatment
• Catherine Klapperich, PhD, BU, a microfluidic system for monitoring sepsis at the point of care
• Robert Levine, MD, MGH, operating on the heart from within – a minimally invasive approach to treat mistral valve disease
• Chun Lim, MD, PhD, BIDMC, augmented reality glasses for the treatment of visuospatial neglect
• Charles Lin, PhD, MGH, label-free detection and quantification of circulating leukocytes by in vivo flow cytometry

Others awards are to:

• Dieter Manstein, MD, MGH, non-invasive measurement of intraepidermal nerve density
• Alvaro Pascual-Leone, MD, PhD, BIDMC, near-infrared photobiostimulation as means of neuromodulation in stroke
• Stephen Pelton, MD, BMC, development of safe and effective novel transtympanic membrane strategy for treatment of acute bacterial otitis media
• Gottfried Schlaug, MD, PhD, BIDMC, stroke recovery
• Rob Sheridan, MD, MGH, magnetic endotracheal tube imaging device
• Cathryn Sundback, ScD, MGH, poly (glycerolsebacate) film as barrier to formation of viscero-parietal peritoneal adhesions
• Gary Tearney, MD, PhD, MGH, integrated OFDI-fluorescence catheter for imaging of atherosclerosis
• Y.D. Teng, MD, PhD, BWH, antioxidant and injectable biodegradable polymers to promote functional recovery from traumatic spinal cord injury
• Seok Yun, PhD, MGH, novel ocular biomechanical analysis

Two grants were given under the heading of Clinical Systems Innovation (CSI) to support research improvements in systems operated in clinics or medical centers. One went to Ronald Dixon, MD, MGH, for Healthcare 360: a technology-enabled model for general medical care; and to Ronald Newbower, PhD, MGH, handwashing compliance reminder and documentation system.

View FY09 Awards Chart