Harrington Discovery Institute at University Hospitals announces 2018 grant funding to 10 physician-scientists

CLEVELAND, Jan. 18, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The Harrington Discovery Institute at University Hospitals in Cleveland, Ohio, today announced the 2018 Harrington Scholar-Innovator Award recipients. The awards support breakthrough discoveries in diverse research areas including cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis, and addiction.

The Harrington Discovery Institute ? part of The Harrington Project for Discovery & Development ? fulfills an unmet need in academic medicine: to advance early breakthroughs into the clinical realm. Award recipients are selected for the promise of their research to advance standards of care in medicine, regardless of their institution affiliation.       

In addition to financial support awarded to the winners, the Harrington Discovery Institute provides guidance in all aspects of drug discovery from its Innovation Support Center. This is a team of pharmaceutical industry experts who oversee the therapeutic development of Scholar programs. While working with the Harrington Discovery Institute, physician-scientists (and their institutions) retain the intellectual property for their work.

"This extraordinary group of physician-scientists constitutes our sixth class of Harrington Scholar-Innovators. We selected these projects from a highly competitive pool of applications based on their potential to advance from discoveries into medicines that will improve human health," said Jonathan Stamler, MD, President of the Harrington Discovery Institute.

The selected scholars have access to several rounds of capital (up to a total of $700,000) through their affiliation with the Harrington Discovery Institute to support the transition of their work into the private sector. Scholars are then free to approach investors of their choice to underwrite the commercialization of their work. They also have facilitated access to BioMotiv, the mission-aligned development company that is part of The Harrington Project. However, there are no obligations on either side. 

"We hear from our scholars that the tailored guidance they receive throughout the program and the connection to a for-profit accelerator are vital to success," added Dr. Stamler. "We know that our model works, and we are pleased to see the results, which to date include launching twenty companies, assisting five programs in entering the clinic, and licensing five technologies to big pharma."

The 2018 Harrington Scholar-Innovator Award recipients are:

Suneet Agarwal, MD, PhD - Boston Children's Hospital
Modulators of telomere diseases

Jeffrey Glenn, MD, PhD - Stanford University School of Medicine
A broad spectrum single dose therapeutic to treat flu

Wayne Lencer, MD - Boston Children's Hospital
Novel strategy to treat type 2 diabetes

Robert Messing, MD - University of Texas at Austin
New therapeutic to treat pain and addiction

Victor Schuster, MD - Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Targeting nonalcoholic liver diseases

Bhuvanesh Singh, MD, PhD - Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
Novel agents to treat cancers of the head, neck, and lung

David Sykes, MD, PhD - Massachusetts General Hospital
Developing new treatments for leukemia

Marc Wein, MD, PhD - Massachusetts General Hospital
A new therapeutic to prevent osteoporosis

Adrian Wiestner, MD, PhD - NHLBI/NIH
Enhancing the potency of antibody therapeutics for cancer

Mone Zaidi, MD, PhD - Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
A single agent to treat obesity and osteoporosis

SOURCE Harrington Discovery Institute