The Kenneth Rainin Foundation envisions a world where no one suffers from Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). Our ability to achieve this vision has become more challenging with the political and economic upheaval of 2025. Assaults on federal health and science agencies and funding as well as academic institutions had wide ranging impacts on researchers and their labs. The Foundation met the urgency of the moment with response grants to safeguard opportunities for those early in their career and to help protect the broader scientific landscape.

Despite the upheaval, researchers persevered, gaining new insights into this complex disease. They developed cutting-edge technologies and pursued innovative treatment strategies to enhance patients’ health and well-being. We are grateful to our community of passionate researchers who, like us, remain committed to solving IBD.

Our 2025 Innovator Awards supported 27 teams working to transform how we predict, treat and prevent IBD. Investigators are exploring the gut-brain connection and how neurological disorders and psychological stress impact inflammation and gut motility. They are also examining fibrosis, the gut microbiome, how diet and genes interact and sex differences in IBD patients. Researchers are also advancing novel methodologies and probing the underlying mechanisms of IBD to inform therapeutic strategies.

• Julie Magarian Blander, PhD, Weill Cornell Medicine is investigating how dying cells within the intestinal lining influence immune responses and tissue repair. Using mouse models, she aims to uncover how dendritic cells integrate signals from different types of cell death to direct tailored repair processes. Understanding these mechanisms may inform therapies that both control inflammation and promote lasting healing.

• Ilana Brito, PhD, Cornell University is pioneering new technologies to understand gene flow in natural microbial communities. The Brito Lab recently discovered that proteins made by gut microbiota in healthy individuals trigger the same receptors as glucocorticoids to quell acute IBD flares. They hope to develop IBD therapeutics that act locally on inflamed tissue in the gut and avoid the systemic effects of steroids.

In today’s volatile and competitive funding landscape, we remain committed to supporting early career researchers to reach their full potential. Seventy percent of our 2025 Innovator Awards are at this stage of their careers, and are bringing new lines of thinking, perspectives and technologies that invigorate the field. They are exploring a range of work, including developing focused treatments with fewer side effects and leveraging immune response modulators.

• Ankit Malik, PhD, at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is using cutting-edge gene-editing techniques to leverage intestinal epithelial cells in immune responses during IBD. His preliminary data show that epithelial IRF-1 protects T cells from death in the gut and provokes a beneficial immune response. He hopes to develop targeted IBD therapeutic strategies, including a potential novel class of IRF1-agonists and inhibitors that prevent cell death.

• Miguel Jimenez, PhD, and Liangliang Hao, PhD, at Boston University are building and testing genetic tools in animal models. They will engineer a well-studied probiotic strain to sense disease conditions and deliver therapeutic proteins at the site of intestinal inflammation. They hope to develop targeted microbial therapeutics that are orally bioavailable and avoid adverse systemic effects.

Our 2025 Response Fund focused on sustaining a diverse pipeline of scientists at a time when federal funding cuts reduced research labs’ capacity to support career development and convening opportunities for trainees. Without meaningful chances to learn, connect and advance, the fields we support risk losing a generation of promising scientists. To sustain momentum, we provided grants to our US-based grantees to continue resourcing advancement pathways for the trainees in their labs. Renewed Keystone Symposia scholarships enabled 50 trainees to participate in their IBD-related conferences. Funding to the Association of Black Gastroenterologists and Hepatologists (ABGH) provided travel stipends for trainees to attend a national conference and connect with mentors.  

In collaboration with our Scientific Advisory Board, we also funded projects to counter harmful and false narratives that undermine public trust in science. The Center for American Progress is leading a campaign to Protect Science and American Innovation. Women Make Movies and the Aspen Institute are completing The Endless Frontier, a documentary that will have its world premiere in Washington DC at the DC/DOX Film Festival. The film follows three passionate researchers who unexpectedly find themselves on the frontlines of the fight for science’s future.

Our Innovations Symposium created connection around shared purpose, recognizing the growing need for community building and renewed momentum in the face of adversity. The event returned to Hawai`i, bringing 133 researchers, clinicians and industry professionals together to rekindle their passions and be energized by new insights.

Three days of presentations, poster sessions and informal networking highlighted diverse perspectives on solving IBD and opened avenues for cross-disciplinary collaborations. More than one-third of attendees were graduate students and postdocs, many supported by travel awards, and 18% were early-career. A family friendly design, childcare reimbursement and the beautiful setting encouraged grantees to invite family and loved ones, drawing another 113 guests, including 36 children.

Building strong relationships is essential in a time when public confidence in institutions and scientific research has been severely eroded. We are committed to furthering trust-based practices by being a reliable funder, thought partner and steady presence.

Our Innovator Awards Program reflects these practices by centering grantees’ voices and needs. The open call invites applications from any lab worldwide, including early career researchers, those new to IBD or underrepresented in science. By not requiring preliminary data, we remove a major barrier common in traditional research funding. Our Health Program also provides ongoing support through annual progress check-ins, where we listen closely to how labs are faring. Similarly, our calls to grantees early in 2025 were critical to informing our Response Fund grants. Their openness about funding challenges and trust that we will meaningfully respond is a testament to the strength of our relationships.

This invitation-only grant supports strategic opportunities, bold research ideas and innovations that can lead to scientific breakthroughs and improve the prediction, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD). Learn about these invite-only grantees.

• Color Of Gastrointestinal Illness
• Global Immunotalks
• Keystone Symposia
• University Of California Berkeley Foundation

This discretionary fund supports exceptional and emerging opportunities that will have an outsized impact and move us closer toward our vision of Bay Area artists thriving, all Oakland children reading at or above grade level and no one suffering from Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Learn more about the 2025 Response Fund Health grantees.