Photo credit: Sean Anthony Eddy
The Kenneth Rainin Foundation funds novel ideas that could lead to advancements in preventing and treating IBD.
Breaking New Ground In IBD Research
The Kenneth Rainin Foundation funds cutting-edge ideas to enhance the lives of patients with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). Our grantees ventured into newer areas of high-risk research and embraced translational science and innovative technologies to transform our understanding of the disease.
In 2024, we celebrated 15 years of formal grantmaking and made investments to increase opportunities for early career investigators. Together, we are forging pathways toward breakthroughs in predicting, diagnosing, treating and eventually curing this complex disease.
“Investing in the most promising ideas and supporting early career investigators ensures that today’s scientific progress continues and leads to future discoveries.”
Photos courtesy of the researchers.
Nicole Belle, MD, PhD, and Vivek Rudrapatna, MD, PhD, are the two recipients of the Early Career Catalyst Awards
Catalyzing The Next Generation Of Innovators
Early career investigators bring fresh thinking and introduce technologies and directions that invigorate the field. To commemorate the Foundation’s 15-year anniversary, we honored two physician scientists—Nicole Belle, MD, PhD, University of Pennsylvania and Vivek Rudrapatna, MD, PhD, University of California, San Francisco—with Early Career Catalyst Awards. Dr. Belle seeks to understand the mechanisms of mucosal healing and whether nerves of the intestines help orchestrate intestinal regeneration. Dr. Rudrapatna aims to harness patient records and the learning potential of artificial intelligence to improve clinical decision-making in ulcerative colitis. Both received one-time $500,000 awards to advance their work.
A pipeline of scientists with diverse perspectives is essential to accelerate breakthroughs in IBD research. We continue to create opportunities for investigators, especially those early in their career, to forge connections and exchange ideas. A first-time award to the Keystone Symposia supports 37 scholarships enabling trainees, including those who are underrepresented in science, to attend their meetings. Through our travel awards, 18 finalists of our Early Career Catalyst Awards, as well as nine students and postdocs attended our annual Innovations Symposium.
“My commitment to IBD research is both professional and personal: I am an IBD physician who also happens to be a patient.”
PUTTING PATIENTS FIRST
Video credit: Fox Nakai
In this video, the G-Tech Medical team, including Lindsay Axelrod, MTM (pictured above), talk about how their wireless patch system could transform how patients and clinicians alike manage IBD and other gastrointestinal disorders.
Increasing the diversity of our grantees in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, career status and geography will lead to better science and patient outcomes. We shared data on our efforts to elevate women in our grantmaking and Innovations Symposium over the past twelve years. Our progress is mixed, in part reflecting structural barriers to advancing women in science across academic institutions. We will continue to collect and analyze demographic data to guide our ongoing efforts.
The biomedical research field faces challenges, including political changes that threaten funding for diversity initiatives and the study of IBD. Retention remains a concern, particularly for female identifying and Black, Indigenous and people of color investigators. Too often, institutions rely on individuals to diversify their labs, instead of making systemic changes to expand opportunities. We remain committed to listening and learning from our grantees and responding in ways that promote a more inclusive and sustainable scientific community.
—Laura Wilson, PhD, Director, Health Strategy & Ventures
Photo credit: Mitch Tobias
Dr. Meenakshi Rao presenting at the 2024 Innovations Symposium.
The Rainin Foundation continued to further trust-based practices of shifting power to our grantee communities to promote equity and more effective grantmaking. This year we resumed visiting grantees in their labs to gain insights into their ongoing work and challenges. Listening to and centering their perspectives and self-defined needs helps us and them continue making an impact. This approach guided the design of a three-year $710,000 capacity building grant to the Association of Black Gastroenterologists and Hepatologists. Shaped by their programming priorities, the funding will support their mentorship program and hiring an executive director, as well as six research fellowships. Our shared aim is to diversify the IBD workforce to enhance care and health outcomes for all patients, including patients of color.
We also continued efforts to reduce grantee burdens and barriers to funding. Our Innovator Awards support investigators at any career stage with the ability to reapply more than once, even if their previous application did not move forward.
Photo credit: Mitch Tobias
Grantee Tiffany Scharschmidt, MD, University of California, San Francisco (left) with Manuela Raffatellu, MD, University of California, San Diego and Gretchen Diehl, PhD, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center at our 2023 Innovations Symposium.
Improving Outcomes For IBD Patients
Our 2024 Innovator Award grantees are advancing cutting-edge ideas to enhance the quality of life for IBD patients. Individual investigators and collaborative teams are using novel approaches and increasingly considering clinical outcomes when shaping their research questions and approaches.
- Tiffany Scharschmidt, MD, at University of California, San Francisco is collaborating with James Gardner, MD, PhD, University of California, San Francisco; and Caleb Lareau, PhD, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Using a novel single-cell genomic method, they are gaining an unprecedented view into bacteria-immune cell interactions in barrier skin and gut tissues. They hope to set the stage for future work to interrogate bacterial influences in specific human diseases such as IBD.
- Maia Kayal, MD, at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai is researching how to lower the risk of pouchitis in ulcerative colitis patients who require surgery and how best to treat patients with chronic pouchitis.
- Meenakshi Rao, MD, PhD, at Boston Children’s Hospital is using genetic models to investigate how the enteric nervous system detects information about nutrients, microbes and mechanical stimuli. Her lab aims to understand how gastrointestinal motility, appetite, epithelial repair and immune responses are regulated between the gut and nervous system.
Photo credit: M. Scott Brauer
Dr. Gloria Choi in her lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Delving Into Neuroimmune Connections
Our early funding for promising, untested ideas encourages new lines of thinking to transform how we understand this complex disease. Grantees are delving into the neuroimmune connection, and the translational potential of more targeted microbiome research, which could lead to improved treatments for patients.
- Sarkis Mazmanian, PhD, at California Institute of Technology, with Daniel Holschneider, MD, at University of Southern California, are exploring how stress plays a role in reshaping the gut microbiome during colitis, including vagus nerve signaling and effects on the enteric nervous system. Their aim is to understand the influence of stress on flare ups in IBD and to discover targeted treatments for patients.
- Gloria Choi, PhD, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology is investigating how behavioral and internal states encoded in the brain influence immune function in the gut. Her lab studies neuroimmune interactions with the goal of identifying novel therapeutic strategies to alleviate gut symptoms in patients with IBD.
ADVANCING CUTTING-EDGE IBD RESEARCH
Photo credit: John Abbott
The Foundation’s Scientific Advisory Board ensures a variety of perspectives and experiences guide our funding recommendations and strategies toward curing IBD. Scientific Advisory Board Member Dr. David Artis is a champion of bold, innovative research. He is pictured above talking with Dr. Wen Zhang in his lab at the Jill Roberts Institute for Research in Inflammatory Bowel Disease.
Accelerating Improvements To Patient Health
Our 2024 Innovations Symposium drew 160 investigators, clinicians and industry professionals to share the latest insights into solving IBD. Two days of exchange and networking opened with calls to accelerate improvements to patient health and well-being. An array of speakers reflected the field’s trend toward more targeted research with greater clinical relevance. Findings by several gastroenterologists drove their emphasis on focusing earlier in the disease process to benefit patients. Other presenters highlighted their search for more targeted therapies. Their investigations ranged from the gut-brain axis to the microbiome to the migration of immune cells over time.
Our Innovations Symposium also plays a strategic role in our work to support the next generation of researchers. More than one-third of our 2024 attendees were graduate students and postdocs, and more than one-quarter identified as early career scientists, including 18 finalists of the Foundation’s Early Career Catalyst Award.
Photo credit: Mitch Tobias
Grantee Qinnan Yang, PhD, (right) University of Michigan, discusses his research on the interaction between diet and gut microbes at the Innovations Symposium.
Fueling Research Innovations:
2024 Grantees
The Rainin Foundation invested over $5.6 million in 2024 to advance IBD research.
Health grantmaking supports groundbreaking ideas that have the potential to dramatically transform the prediction and prevention of Inflammatory Bowel Disease.
Note: Financials are subject to audit verification.
Early Career Catalyst Awards
One-time awards that commemorate the Foundation’s 15th anniversary of formal grantmaking and champion the work of two early career investigators whose research has the potential to improve the lives of people with IBD. Learn more about the Early Career Catalyst grantees.
Nicole Belle, MD, PhD, University of Pennsylvania
Vivek Rudrapatna, MD, PhD, University of California, San Francisco
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 2024 Innovator Award grantees.
Jason Cyster, PhD, University of California, San Francisco
Iliyan D. Iliev, PhD, Weill Cornell Medicine
Adam Lacy-Hulbert, PhD, and James Lord, MD, PhD, Benaroya Research Institute
Hyun Jung Kim, PhD, and Olumuyiwa Awoniyi, MD, Cleveland Clinic
Daniel Kotlarz, PhD, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich
Sarkis Mazmanian, PhD, California Institute of Technology, and Philipp Holschneider, MD, University of Southern California
Meenakshi Rao, MD, PhD, Boston Children’s Hospital
Michael Rosen, MD, MSCI, and Sean Bendall, PhD, Stanford University
Sidhartha Ranjit Sinha, MD; Justin Sonnenburg, PhD; and Sean Spencer, MD, PhD, Stanford University
Tiffany C. Scharschmidt, MD, and James Gardner, MD, PhD, University of California, San Francisco; and Caleb Lareau, PhD, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Andrew Z. Wang, MD, and Ezra Burstein, MD, PhD, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
Innovator Awards – Continued Support
Research teams who demonstrate significant progress toward their original goals are eligible for up to two years of additional funding. Learn more about the 2024 Innovator Award grantees.
Adebowale (Wale) O. Bamidele, PhD, Mayo Clinic
Andreas Bäumler, PhD, and Jee-Yon Lee, MD, PhD, University of California, Davis
Gloria B. Choi, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Marco Colonna, MD, Washington University in St. Louis
Lee A. Denson, MD; Michael Helmrath, MD; and James Wells, PhD, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital
Eran Elinav, MD, PhD, Weizmann Institute of Science
Kate A. Fitzgerald, PhD, University of Massachusetts
Chun-Jun Guo, PhD, Weill Cornell Medicine
Wendy S. Garrett, MD, PhD, and Curtis Huttenhower, PhD, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Timothy Hand, PhD, University of Pittsburgh
Reinhard Hinterleitner, PhD, and Jishnu Das, PhD, University of Pittsburgh
Michael George Kattah, MD, PhD, University of California, San Francisco
Meghan Koch, PhD, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
James Lee, MD, PhD, and Brigitta Stockinger, PhD, Francis Crick Institute
James Murphy, PhD; Britt Christensen, PhD; Andre Samson, PhD; and Aysha Al-Ani, BBiomedSc, BMBS, The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research
Shruti Naik, PhD, and Daniel Rosenblum, PhD, Mount Sinai Hospital; and Caleb Lareau, PhD, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Roni Nowarski, PhD, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Jhimmy Talbot, PhD, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center
Christoph A. Thaiss, PhD, University of Pennsylvania
Xu Zhou, PhD, Boston Children’s Hospital
Invite-Only Grantmaking
This invitation-only grant supports bold ideas that have the potential to lead to scientific advancements for researchers and people living with Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). Learn about these invite-only grantees.
Association of Black Gastroenterologists and Hepatologists
Azora Therapeutics, Inc.
Explore the Foundation’s website to learn more about our Health program and meet our staff and Board members.