The Kenneth Rainin Foundation has awarded over $4 million through our Innovator Awards Program. These grants support individual and collaborative research projects that have the potential to improve the prediction, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD).
“Innovative ideas in biomedical research are crucial to enhancing quality of life for IBD patients,” said Laura Wilson, PhD, Director, Health Strategy & Ventures. “The Innovator Awards are designed to support new lines of thinking to transform how we understand this complex disease.”
The 2024 Innovator Award Grantees
This year’s funded projects are diverse in topic, from epithelial cell involvement in disease progression to the microbiome to the gut-brain connection. The 2024 Innovator Award grantees include:
- Adam Lacy-Hulbert, PhD, and James Lord, MD, PhD, Benaroya Research Institute
- Michael Rosen, MD, MSCI, and Sean Bendall, PhD, Stanford University
- Sidhartha Ranjit Sinha, MD; Justin Sonnenburg, PhD; and Sean Spencer, MD, PhD, Stanford University
- Meenakshi Rao, MD, PhD, Boston Children’s Hospital
- Sarkis Mazmanian, PhD, California Institute of Technology, and Philipp Holschneider, MD, University of Southern California
- Hyun Jung Kim, PhD, and Olumuyiwa Awoniyi, MD, Cleveland Clinic
- Daniel Kotlarz, PhD, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich
- Iliyan D. Iliev, PhD, Weill Cornell Medicine
- Tiffany C. Scharschmidt, MD, and James Gardner, MD, PhD, University of California, San Francisco; and Caleb Lareau, PhD, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
- Jason Cyster, PhD, University of California, San Francisco
- Andrew Z. Wang, MD, and Ezra Burstein, MD, PhD, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Grantees in this year’s cohort are embracing innovation to improve treatment options for those living with this complex disease. For example, Dr. Iliyan Iliev is investigating fungal-bacterial interactions, which provide an opportunity for novel treatment of ulcerative colitis. Meanwhile, Dr. Andrew Wang is using immune-checkpoint engineered colon organoids to induce immune tolerance as a treatment for IBD.
We’re very excited for the opportunity to collaborate together on this project which aims to further develop a completely novel approach to study microbe-immune crosstalk at both the gut and skin barrier.
Tiffany C. Scharschmidt, MD, and James Gardner, MD, PhD, University of California, San Francisco and Caleb Lareau, PhD, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Continued Support For Innovator Award Grantees
Researchers who demonstrate significant progress are eligible for up to two years of additional support. The Foundation awarded continued support to 20 Innovator Award grantees from 2022 and 2023.
- Xu Zhou, PhD, Boston Children’s Hospital
- Roni Nowarski, PhD, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
- Lee A. Denson, MD; Michael Helmrath, MD; and James Wells, PhD, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital
- James Lee, MD, PhD, and Brigitta Stockinger, PhD, Francis Crick Institute
- Meghan Koch, PhD, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
- Jhimmy Talbot, PhD, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
- Eran Elinav, MD, PhD, Weizmann Institute of Science
- Gloria B. Choi, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Adebowale (Wale) O. Bamidele, PhD, Mayo Clinic
- Shruti Naik, PhD, and Daniel Rosenblum, PhD, Mount Sinai Hospital; and Caleb Lareau, PhD, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
- Wendy S. Garrett, MD, PhD, and Curtis Huttenhower, PhD, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
- James Murphy, PhD; Britt Christensen, PhD; Andre Samson, PhD; and Aysha Al-Ani, BBiomedSc, BMBS, The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research
- Christoph A. Thaiss, PhD, University of Pennsylvania
- Andreas Bäumler, PhD, and Jee-Yon Lee, MD, PhD, University of California, Davis
- Michael George Kattah, MD, PhD, University of California, San Francisco
- Kate A. Fitzgerald, PhD, University of Massachusetts
- Timothy Hand, PhD, University of Pittsburgh
- Reinhard Hinterleitner, PhD, and Jishnu Das, PhD, University of Pittsburgh
- Marco Colonna, MD, Washington University in St. Louis
- Chun-Jun Guo, PhD, Weill Cornell Medicine
Read more about the 2024 Innovator Award grantee projects.
I am grateful and excited to join the Rainin community. This funding will help reveal how central nervous system encoding of social interactions might modulate gut immune responses, providing novel perspectives to the study of IBD.
Gloria B. Choi, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
About The Kenneth Rainin Foundation
Kenneth Rainin Foundation is a family foundation that collaborates with creative thinkers in the Arts, Education and Health. We believe in taking smart risks to achieve breakthroughs. In 2024, the Foundation is celebrating 15 years of formal grantmaking that supports visionary artists in the Bay Area, creates opportunities for Oakland’s youngest learners and funds researchers on the forefront of scientific discoveries. Since 2009, the Foundation has awarded over $45 million in funding to support innovative IBD research. Learn more about the Rainin Foundation’s grantmaking. Explore the Rainin IBD research portal to learn more about the Rainin Foundation’s research grantees and funding areas, as well as its vision and strategy for solving IBD.
