Four Harvard Medical School researchers have been awarded research grants by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as part of their High-Risk, High-Reward Research program. In this year’s round, the NIH will provide approximately $237.5 million in funding to 58 investigators pursuing bold ideas that challenge conventional approaches with the potential to open new pathways to scientific discovery.
Funded by the NIH Common Fund along with two other NIH institutes and offices, the High-Risk, High-Reward Research program supports scientists at different career stages who propose highly innovative research that may be difficult to pursue with traditional NIH funding mechanisms.
Four early-career investigators at HMS received the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award. Established in 2007, the award supports unusually innovative research from investigators who are within 10 years of their final degree or clinical residency and have not yet received an NIH R01 or equivalent grant.
The New Innovators from HMS are:
- Corey Allard, assistant professor of cell biology in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS. Allard’s lab studies how cells and molecules give rise to the distinctive biology and behaviors of animals, using unusual and highly specialized organisms to uncover processes that might otherwise be difficult to study.
Xin Gu, HMS assistant professor of cell biology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Gu’s lab discovered a protein-degradation pathway known as the midnolin-proteasome pathway. She hopes that better understanding this pathway will have clinical benefits for brain function, the immune system, and cancer treatment.
- Nicholas Polizzi, HMS assistant professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Dana-Farber. Polizzi’s lab combines computational protein design with lab experiments to better understand how proteins recognize and bind to other molecules, with the aim of using those binding tools to create new proteins with clinical potential.
- Alice Stanton, HMS assistant professor of neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital. Stanton’s research combines neurogenetics, omics, and cell biology techniques with nanotechnology, microfluidics, tissue-engineered organoids, and other approaches to discover better treatments for neurological diseases.
