The youngest of our three funding areas, the Health program has been providing grants to advance Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) research for six years. But 2016 was a year of steady evolution and maturation for the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, and our Health program was no exception. Under the leadership of Laura Wilson, PhD, who joined the Foundation as Director of Health Strategies & Ventures, the program continues to support high-risk, high-reward projects and partnerships, while expanding its funding into new directions.

Translational research ensures we connect exciting scientific findings to relevant clinical impact for the patient. It includes, but is not limited to, applying discoveries generated through laboratory-based research and preclinical studies to developing trials and further studies in humans. As a funder of novel ideas, the Rainin Foundation is keen to explore the use of technology and devices to underpin some of this translational science as a means to improve patient care and complement existing practices in the community.

Because the Foundation is passionate about and committed to innovation, our strategy is to impact human health from a patient-focused perspective—supporting more translational science in tandem with basic research to generate new successes. In our first foray into this sort of accelerated science, we awarded a grant to G-Tech Medical, a Bay Area start-up company that seeks a new way of tracking gut motility in the context of IBD. Their pioneering work offers the high-risk, high-reward potential the Foundation eagerly supports.

While our long-term goal is to cure chronic disease, most immediately we want to help improve the ability to predict and prevent the development of IBD, as its prevalence is increasing at alarming rates. There are several areas of study central to these efforts.

The Rainin Foundation supports grantees who are studying the impact of standardized diets on IBD, looking for reliable data that links diet to the disease. In the near term, scientifically validated diets could help to facilitate remission as effectively as some medications. With scientific proof to inform clinicians about predictable outcomes of effective diets, patients will no longer have to experiment with dubious diets based on anecdotal evidence. They will be empowered with the knowledge and tools they need to affect their own healing.

Among our grantees who are conducting distinct studies on the microbiome, we are seeing progress—and their findings are building on one other. Scientists are looking into what these bacteria are doing and how they might increase or decrease the frequency and severity of flare-ups for people with IBD. Some see patients and have access to clinical samples that they can provide to researchers who are considering the same sorts of questions. By focusing on a common goal, scientists are harnessing the power of collaborative efforts, which we believe is critical to advancing the field.

In addition to these projects, we continue to support research on new therapeutics, immunity and inflammation, and the exploration of other risk factors in IBD. We continually assess our strategies to ensure that we are flexible, forward-thinking, and adaptable to the changing needs of the field. As has been our practice, we turn to the experts—our partners and grantees—to get insights and find out what’s needed to support the work. We listen and respond to be the best partner we can be.

As a leading funder of IBD research, the Rainin Foundation invests in bold ideas and partnerships that have the potential to accelerate scientific breakthroughs. In 2016, we partnered with the Philanthropy Advisory Service of the Milken Institute to learn how strategic investments can change the trajectory of IBD research. This collaboration resulted in A Giving Smarter Guide, which explores research barriers, funding gaps and possible solutions to address challenges.

We also joined forces with OpenBiome, a nonprofit stool bank dedicated to expanding safe access to Fecal Microbiota Transplantation (FMT), to produce an overview of the state of research on this potential therapy for IBD. This report informed the design of a study we are funding at the University of California, San Francisco. In partnership with OpenBiome, researchers seek to understand how FMT can benefit patients with ulcerative colitis.

We anticipate that these investments and efforts will lead to improvements for predicting and preventing IBD.

Collaboration is a cornerstone of our work. We actively look for ways to facilitate connections among researchers. We hosted our fifth annual Innovations Symposium in 2016 to bring our grantees together with others working within and outside of the IBD research field. Guest speakers—including leading scientists, clinicians and representatives from biotech companies around the world—gave thought-provoking presentations, which in turn led to critical conversations. Our grantees also presented new, unpublished data from their cutting-edge research. The Symposium’s format emphasized and promoted attendee engagement with abundant time for networking and small-group discussions. To encourage young scientists to pursue IBD research, we offered travel grants and encouraged our grantees to bring trainees to the Symposium. New collaborations and partnerships took shape at the event.

We support groundbreaking ways to explore the most cutting-edge areas of IBD research because we know that people’s lives are at stake.

View more information about these grants.