UMass Chan innovation fund invests $2M in faculty research

PHOTO | Courtesy of UMass Chan Medical School Parth Chakrabarti, executive vice chancellor, UMass Chan Medical School

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By Isabel Tehan

BRIDGE Innovation and Business Development, the commercialization hub at UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester, has selected 13 faculty-led research projects to fund with $2 million in capital.

Selected research projects are those that show promise for clinical applications and commercialization, according to a Thursday announcement from UMass Chan. The funding is used to assist researchers in producing essential data sets that can be provided to investors. The BRIDGE funding totaled $1 million in 2019, and is expected to reach $3 million in 2025.

Funding ranges from from $31,000 to $302,400 per research project, according to the announcement.

“We’re proud to invest $2 million in pioneering projects that showcase potential for clinical application and commercialization. Over the past three years, we have invested more than $6 million to build a strong pipeline of cutting-edge inventions across new therapeutics and medical devices,” Parth Chakrabarti, executive vice chancellor for innovation and business development at UMass Chan, said in the announcement.

Faculty at UMass Chan submitted 29 projects for funding. Selected faculty projects include melanoma treatment, genome editing, atrial fibrillation treatment, and lung cancer treatment.

The full list of awardees and projects is below.

Dr. John Harris, chair and professor of dermatology, and director of the Vitiligo Clinic and Research Center: Self-delivering AIM2-siRNA as adjuvant therapy to treat nonresponders to melanoma immunotherapy.
Erik Sontheimer, chair in biomedical research and professor of RNA therapeutics: A novel precision genome editing platform.
Craig Ceol, assistant professor of molecular medicine: Development and validation of human antibodies that target BMP signaling in melanoma.
Phillip Tai, assistant professor of microbiology & physiological systems: Grafting of an enhanced VP1u region derived from natural AAV2 capsids onto other capsid serotypes to boost transduction of adeno-associated virus vectors for gene therapy.
Fiachra Humphries, assistant professor of medicine: Therapeutic targeting of a macrophage receptor in cancer.
Claudio Punzo, associate professor of ophthalmology & visual sciences: Pre-investigative new drug studies for the treatment of age-related macular degeneration.
Trudy Morrison, professor of microbiology & physiological systems: Efficacy of a novel VLP vaccine for respiratory syncytial virus.
Andrei Korostelev, professor of RNA therapeutics: mRNA-specific readthrough of nonsense codons to treat hundreds of genetic disorders.
Dr. Kevin Donahue, professor of medicine: High-intensity and atrial-specific gene expression for treatment of atrial fibrillation
Ann Marshak-Rothstein, professor of medicine: Development of a second generation sFasL gene therapy for glaucoma.
Dohoon Kim, associate professor of molecular, cell & cancer biology: Detoxifying enzyme inhibition as a targeted, predictable therapy for refractory lung cancer and beyond.
Paul Thompson, professor of biochemistry & molecular biotechnology and director of the Chemical Biology Interface program: Inhibitors of the SARS-CoV2 main protease for the treatment of SARS-CoV2.
Celia Schiffer, professor of biochemistry and molecular biotechnology and chair and professor of biochemistry & molecular biotechnology: Dual-acting HIV-1/HTLV-1 protease inhibitors.