Brown awards biomedical tech grants

Robert Reenan
ROBERT REENAN, a biology professor at Brown University, uses fruit flies to study the neurodegenerative disease known as ALS. His is one of two projects to receive funding through Brown's new Biomedical Innovation Fund. / COURTESY BROWN UNIVERSITY/DAVID ORENSTEIN

PROVIDENCE – Brown University has created the Brown Biomedical Innovation Fund to accelerate the commercialization of new technology discovered in its research labs, and selected its first two grant recipients, the school announced April 19.

The fund was launched as a partnership between Brown’s Technology Ventures Office and Brown Biomedical Innovations Inc., the university’s commercialization arm, and is part of a strategic plan to help researchers demonstrate the value of their work to potential investors and ensure that research breakthroughs make a meaningful medical difference for patients.

“Through this new innovation fund, we can help our teams of researchers advance promising discoveries toward marketable technologies so that they can realize their full potential,” said Dr. Jack A. Elias, dean of medicine and biologic sciences at Brown and head of Brown Biomedical Innovations. “Moreover, this targeted program creates an environment that fosters faculty enterprise and provides real-life scientific and entrepreneurial experience to our students.”

The first two Biomedical Innovation Fund grants – up to $100,000 each – have been awarded to research projects that could one day help doctors diagnose and treat debilitating diseases.

- Advertisement -

Robert Reenan, professor of biology at Brown, has used fruit flies to engineer a model of the neurodegenerative disease amyloid lateral sclerosis, better known as ALS. The model has allowed Reenan and his team to identify mutations belonging to a “suppressor gene” that mitigates the harmful effects of ALS, and his team hopes to use that information to guide their search for drug compounds that could replicate these beneficial effects.

The second grant was awarded to Barry Lester and Dr. Stephen Sheinkopf, professors of psychiatry and human behavior and pediatrics, and their partner Harry Silverman, professor of engineering. The team has devised a computer algorithm to analyze a baby’s cries to identify the distinctive cry associated with neonatal abstinence syndrome, a condition with withdrawal-like symptoms found among newborns born to mothers with an opioid addiction.

The grant funding will enable the team to collect data they can then use to attract potential investors in the development of a handheld “iPhone-like” device that can aid doctors in diagnosing NAS in infants.

Katherine Gordon, managing director of Brown’s Technology Ventures Office, said the fund will help these projects and future ones overcome the gap between research and/or commercialization.

The Biomedical Innovation Fund is supported by gifts from Brown University parents Wes and Lynn Edens, and alumni and parents Drs. Mark and Recia Kott Blumenkranz.

Kaylen Auer is a PBN contributing writer.

No posts to display