Two awards announced by Brigham Ignite

A mobile app for rheumatology and treatment for reperfusion injury reduction are foci of the grants

Boston, MA, August 26, 2024--Two Brigham investigators recently were awarded grants to further their research projects. One project relates to a rheumatology app that is integrated in the clinical workflow, and the other is for the development of a small molecule to treat reperfusion injury. The Ignite awards are given to Brigham and Women’s Hospital innovators for early-stage innovation acceleration projects advancing discoveries with clinical and commercial potential.

Along with supportive funding, the awards provide recipients with guidance on licensing, product development, intellectual property and commercialization so that principal investigators are able to take the beginning steps on the translational path. Mass General Brigham Innovation partners with Brigham Ignite to further the development pipeline of treatment options, medical devices and technology that will improve patient outcomes.

Ignite offers two levels of funding: Seed grants provide up to $50,000 and Development grants offer up to $200,000.

The projects, researchers, and leading Innovation staff members are:

Rheumatology Mobile Application for Patient Reported Outcomes 

Daniel Solomon, MD, MPH—Development Award

Patients with rheumatic diseases struggle to find care for their disease due to a growing lack of trained providers. This is further exacerbated by the lack of scalable, evidence-based tools that allow rheumatologists to more accurately determine when patients should be seen. The current practice of collecting patient reported outcomes (PROs) during in-person visits used in many health systems does not provide a true longitudinal assessment of symptoms. RheumApp- an easy-to-use, mobile health PRO application that Dr. Solomon developed addresses these challenges, with features that allow collection of between-visit PROs and a structured longitudinal assessment of patients’ rheumatic disease symptoms, offering transparent, evidence-driven clinical decision making. RheumApp has been iterated through several studies, to add attributes which provide patients with rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis, the ability to easily record and communicate their symptoms remotely with the clinical care team using the app and feel more in control of their disease. The Brigham Ignite award will help to make the current version of RheumApp commercial-ready, to better meet the needs of the patients, clinicians, and health systems, with dynamic, objective, and effective disease and cost management.

Program Manager—Kalpana Kamath, PhD

Licensing Manager—Gandhy Pierre-Louis, PhD

Development of Small Molecule L2HGDH Inhibitors to Treat Reperfusion Injury

William Oldham, MD, PhD—Seed award

After a myocardial infarction, 50% of the final volume of dead heart muscle may be attributable to reperfusion injury rather than the initial ischemic insult. Infarct size strongly correlates with mortality and hospitalization rates, but there are no therapeutics available to reduce reperfusion injury. Mice lacking the enzyme l-2-hydroxyglutarate dehydrogenase (L2HGDH) have been observed to have improved cardiac functional recovery following ischemia. This project plans to biochemically screen molecules with a library at the Broad’s Center for the Development of Translation, searching for a molecule that can inhibit L2HGDH. Any hits from this library will be tested in cells. The high-resolution crystal structure of L2HGDH will be used to perform computational screening; molecules found to be successful in cell testing can be improved based on this structure.

Program Manager—Eilish Brown, MBA

Licensing Managers—David Silva, PhD and Ilona Sunyovszki

About Mass General Brigham

Mass General Brigham is the nation’s largest academic research enterprise. More than 150 life science and biotechnology companies have been established in Massachusetts as a result of the more than $2 billion in government funded and privately sponsored research that Mass General Brigham attracts every year. The groundbreaking research performed at Mass General Brigham is integral to developing and commercializing life-changing therapies, which sustains Massachusetts’ competitive advantage in the innovation economy.