Dr. Frank Torti, executive vice president for health affairs and medical school dean, has announced the recipients of the Health Center’s first Spark Grants. The grants aim to help investigators move ideas into the earliest stages of commercialization and development.
The selection committee included Health Center faculty leaders, entrepreneurs and senior executives from top pharmaceutical, biotechnological and venture capital firms. The committee members were impressed by the science and innovation conveyed in all eleven presentations. The committee selected the following six awardees:
- Linda Shapiro and Jiyeon Kim: Universally accepted, stem cell-derived products for transplant therapy without general immune suppression
- Dr. J. Robert Kelly and Douglas Adams: Artificial salivary pump/gland concept
- Dr. Pramod Srivastava, principal investigator, together with co-investigators Dr. Angela Kueck, Fei Duan, Ion Mandoiu and collaborator, Sahar Al Seesi: Oncoimmune, a tumor-specific immunotherapy for the treatment of stage III/IV ovarian cancer
- Anthony Vella and Adam Adler: Two-headed immunotherapy
- Drs. Keith Gibson and Jeffrey Gross: Hypobaric oxygenation during cardiopulmonary bypass
- Kevin Claffey, principal investigator, together with co-investigators Ann Cowan, Mitch McGee, David Han and Quing Zhu: Validation of human breast immunological target based upon patient-derived sentinel node antibody characterization
“These projects are a first step toward the Health Center’s goal to become a world renowned destination for discovery and innovation—one of the goals in UConn Health 2020,” said Torti.
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