The Kenneth Rainin Foundation envisions a world where no one suffers from Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). In 2023, our grantees’ novel insights and cutting-edge technologies advanced the understanding and treatment of these diseases. Their innovations are identifying new targets for therapeutics and helping to speed the development of new drugs for those living with IBD. Throughout the year, we remained focused on advancing equity in our practices and promoting greater diversity in the field to improve outcomes for patients.

The lack of racial representation in healthcare and biomedical research negatively affects patients of color. Over the past few years, we have been building relationships with historically underrepresented researchers and research institutions to advance meaningful change. This work introduced us to two recently established organizations—led by and for people of color—that are at the forefront of addressing disparities for researchers, clinicians and patients of color.

The Association for Black Gastroenterologists and Hepatologists (ABGH) promotes health equity in Black communities, advances science and develops the careers of Black clinicians and scientists. Our funding supported organizational capacity building and ABGH Rising, a new mentorship program that offers educational and career development workshops and pairs Black clinicians with Black medical students and trainees.

Color of Gastrointestinal Illnesses promotes research, education and advocacy to improve the quality of life for people of color living with IBD and other chronic illnesses. Our grant funded communications and programming for patient education and awareness during IBD Awareness Week, in collaboration with ABGH. These investments reflect our commitment to improving patient outcomes, and to funding the people and ideas driving long-lasting change.

Our early funding for innovative ideas is leading to improvements in preventing, diagnosing and treating IBD. Grantees are unlocking new therapeutic targets by exploring unique aspects of the complex relationship between immunity and inflammation in health and disease.

• At her University of Massachusetts lab, Kate Fitzgerald, PhD, studies a long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) that maintains tissue homeostasis and restrains inflammation in healthy and functional tissue. In patients with ulcerative colitis however, the levels of this lncRNA decrease. Her results suggest opportunities to restore tissue health by controlling those levels.
• Brigitta Stockinger, PhD, and co-investigator James Lee, MD, PhD, teamed up at the Francis Crick Institute. Dr. Stockinger’s work in immunology and inflammation examines the interplay between genes and environmental factors like diet. Their collaboration focuses on a gene called AHR, which is both an important sensor of dietary compounds and an IBD risk factor.

Many of our 2023 Innovator Award grantees seek to harness metabolic interactions in the microbiome as promising avenues for new treatments. The field’s increased focus on metabolites is leading to greater momentum in drug development and clinical testing. Momentum matters to patients.

• At Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Wendy Garrett, MD, PhD, and co-investigator Curtis Huttenhower, PhD, are researching how a class of bacterial metabolites called fatty acid amides affect resistance and susceptibility to IBD.
• Manuela Raffatellu, MD, at University of California, San Diego, is investigating how beneficial and harmful bacteria influence the generation of antibodies by B cells under healthy and ulcerative colitis conditions.
• Andreas Bäumler, PhD, at University of California, Davis, is examining whether sorbitol, a sugar substitute, exacerbates colitis by increasing osmotic stress and triggering colonic inflammation.

Grantees are also leveraging advanced technologies and analytical methods in IBD research. Projects relate to regulating immune response, preventing disease progression and deciphering IBD’s predictive factors.

• At his University of Pittsburgh lab, Timothy Hand, PhD, developed a rapid and flexible method for measuring the microbial products in IBD patients. It provides more useful data about outputs than current methods during an acute IBD flare and identifies what genes are being expressed by each. To demonstrate its efficacy, they will measure the number and toxin expression of Clostridiodes difficile, a common bacterium in IBD patients.
• Using cutting-edge technologies with her lab at Johns Hopkins University, Jamie Spangler, PhD, has engineered a cytokine-antibody fusion protein. It leverages the potential for the interleukin-2 protein to mitigate autoimmune diseases, including IBD, without stimulating other factors that drive inflammation and lead to disease progression. Their project advances studies in animal models and patient samples to lay the groundwork for clinical trials.
• At the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Francesca Petralia, PhD, teamed up with Jean-Frédéric Colombel, MD, and Zeynep Gumus, PhD. Drawing on Dr. Petralia’s work developing new statistical methods, the collaboration will examine the molecular underpinnings of IBD’s preclinical period using the predictive power of machine-learning based models. By integrating massive multi-omic data sets from a large study of samples from the US Department of Defense Serum repository, they hope to identify primary factors that initiate and advance IBD development.

In July, an energized group of researchers and clinicians attended the Rainin Foundation’s first in-person Innovations Symposium since 2019. Speakers ranged from seasoned investigators to early- and mid-career innovators across various fields. Their presentations included the microbiome’s role in maintaining homeostasis and contributing to inflammation, intriguing immunological connections to skin bacteria and the effect of circadian rhythms.

Our Innovations Symposium is a key strategy in our work to support early-career scientists. This event is designed to provide these investigators with opportunities to network and learn from leaders in the field. More than one-third of attendees were graduate students and postdocs, many of whom presented posters and benefited from our travel awards. In keeping with our long tradition of investing in the researcher pipeline, this year we doubled the number of those travel awards due to a record number of abstract submissions.

INNOVATOR AWARDS

Grants support an international pool of early-career and seasoned researchers to study untested ideas that could lead to breakthrough discoveries about IBD. Learn more about the 2023 Innovator Award grantees.

INNOVATOR AWARDS – CONTINUED SUPPORT

Grants support an international pool of early-career and seasoned researchers to study untested ideas that could lead to breakthrough discoveries about IBD. Research teams who demonstrate significant progress toward their original goals are eligible for up to two years of additional support. Learn more about the 2023 Innovator Award grantees.

COMPLEMENTARY GRANTMAKING

This invitation-only grant supports bold ideas that have the potential to lead to scientific breakthroughs for researchers and people living with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). 

RESPONSE FUND

This discretionary fund supports exceptional and emerging opportunities that will have an outsized impact and move us closer toward our vision of no one suffering from Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Bay Area artists thriving and all Oakland children reading at or above grade level.

• Association of Black Gastroenterologists