Harrington Discovery Institute at University Hospitals announces grant funding to physician-scientists at major academic medical centers nationwide to support new drug development

CLEVELAND, Dec. 10, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The Harrington Discovery Institute at University Hospitals (UH) in Cleveland, Ohio, has announced the 2015 recipients of Harrington Scholar-Innovator Awards. The awards will support drug discovery efforts of great promise at renowned institutions across the nation.

For the past decade, American medicine has been challenged in developing new drugs that would improve on standard of care. Lacking knowhow and industry support, many discoveries are unable to advance into the clinical realm. Aimed at addressing this critical issue, the Harrington Discovery Institute (HDI), established in 2012, is a national initiative dedicated to physician-scientists, enabling them to transform breakthrough insights into novel medicines. The institute has become the catalyst for a new national model that aligns, through structure and mission, for-profit and nonprofit resources to create a dedicated system for drug development.  

The HDI opens an annual grant competition each spring to identify the nation's most promising medical breakthroughs and to accelerate their usage into patient care. In its third year, the program has chosen 11 physician-scientists to receive Harrington Scholar-Innovator awards of up to $700,000 over two years ($100,000 guaranteed). In addition, these Scholar-Innovators will be given access to HDI's Innovation Support Center that includes a renowned group of industry experts charged with helping guide drug development. Successful initiatives have access to several rounds of capital support to further the transition into the commercial realm.  

"By identifying promising scientific discoveries and linking the researchers responsible for them with scientific and business experts in drug development, we set out to build a bridge across the 'Valley of Death' – the chasm between the laboratory and commercialization of new therapies," says Jonathan Stamler, MD, Director of the Harrington Discovery Institute. "We provide inventors – Harrington Scholar-Innovators of unusual promise from around the nation, who share a laser-sharp focus on advancing innovations – with biopharmaceutical expertise necessary to conquer disease." 

The 2015 Harrington Scholar-Innovator grant recipients are:

Robert Bonomo, MD – Case Western Reserve University – Novel antibacterial agents to treat drug-resistant infections

John Burnett Jr., MD – Mayo Clinic – Novel peptide therapy for heart failure

Nicole Calakos, MD, PhD – Duke University – Anti-viral medicines to treat movement disorders

David Clemmons, MD – University of North Carolina – Novel class of drugs to treat osteoporosis

Barry Coller, MD – Rockefeller University – A new pre-hospital drug to treat heart attack

Clark Distelhorst, MD – Case Western Reserve University – Targeting a new pathway to treat blood cancers

Xianxin Hua, MD, PhD – University of Pennsylvania – A drug that regenerates pancreas cells to treat diabetes

Richard Johnson, MD – University of Colorado – A novel drug class to treat obesity and diabetes

Marikki Laiho, MD, PhD – Johns Hopkins University – A first-in-kind small molecule that targets an essential mechanism for cancer cell survival

Geoffrey Pitt, MD, PhD – Duke University – A novel class of drugs that increase bone mass

Ira Tabas, MD, PhD – Columbia University – Targeting a new pathway common to diabetes and atherosclerosis

"Our overall goal is to build a network of physician-scientists across the nation on the front lines of drug development," explains Dr. Stamler, who is also Director of the Institute for Transformative Molecular Medicine at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. "This year, the Harrington Discovery Institute will support 35 drug discovery programs around the US and at Oxford, our new partner institution in the UK. It is an aggressive agenda toward changing medicine and society by enabling a global infrastructure of physician-scientists to turn their discoveries into medicines."

The Harrington Discovery Institute is the not-for-profit academic medical arm of The Harrington Project for Discovery & Development – a first-of-its-kind, $250 million initiative that also includes a mission-aligned, for-profit development company, BioMotiv. Aligning these entities has, for the first time at an academic medical center, provided a comprehensive national model to advance discoveries into therapies that benefit patients. 

This past year, the HDI formalized relationships with the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation and the Foundation Fighting Blindness as well as the State of Ohio to accelerate the efforts to find new treatments.  Most recently the HDI and University of Oxford in the United Kingdom announced a new affiliation that will leverage the academic medical centers' combined expertise and resources to create an international initiative to drive early-stage drug discovery and development.

The Harrington Project for Discovery & Development
The Harrington Project for Discovery & Development (The Harrington Project), announced in late February 2012, is a first-of-its-kind $250 million national initiative, powered by a $50 million gift from the Harrington family.  It includes the Harrington Discovery Institute and a for-profit, mission-aligned development company, BioMotiv.

For more information about The Harrington Project, the Harrington Discovery Institute and the Harrington Scholar-Innovator program, visit: www.HarringtonDiscovery.org

The Creation of a Novel Commercialization Vehicle: Bringing Discoveries to Market
As part of the The Harrington Project, the Harrington Discovery Institute is aligned with a mission-driven, for-profit development company, BioMotiv, which is building a portfolio of high-value, early-stage development programs. Products are advanced to clinical proof-of-concept and then partnered.  BioMotiv is dedicated to advancing discoveries by the nation's universities and medical centers.

For more information visit:  BioMotiv.com.

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SOURCE Harrington Discovery Institute at University Hospitals

Related Links

http://www.HarringtonDiscovery.org