RESOURCES

Harvard Tech Grants Provide Gap Funding to Accelerate Life Science Research

The first recipients of grants from the Technology Development Accelerator Fund were recently announced by Harvard’s Office of Technology Development (OTD). Established by the Office of the Provost and OTD, the Accelerator Fund supports the development of new technologies in the life sciences generated by Harvard investigators. New technology arising from academic research is typically at an early stage and therefore often considered premature for funding from traditional sources—industry in particular. The Accelerator Fund was established to fill this gap and enable scientists to advance their inventions more quickly from the research stage to the development stage, which may allow them to get products into the marketplace faster. Out of six projects chosen from a total of 27 applications received from the Harvard research community, five originated at HMS. These five, which will receive a total of $1.2 million, include:

• Suzanne Walker, HMS professor of microbiology and molecular genetics: “OGT Inhibitors to Treat Diabetic Complications”
The Walker lab is developing potent specific inhibitors of an essential eukaryotic glycosyltransferase for treating diabetes and will use the funds to support synthetic chemistry efforts to determine structure–activity relationships and to increase potency of identified screening hits.

• Pamela Silver, HMS professor of systems biology: “Improving Binding Efficiency of Protein-based Therapeutics”
The project will use the principles of quantitative systems biology, structural biology, and synthetic biology to design and test a new class of proteins that affect their therapeutic target cells more specifically. The platform will be applicable to targeting multiple diseases.

• Arlene Sharpe, the George Fabyan professor of comparative pathology at HMS: “Modulating the Immune Response to Treat Disease: PD-1 Small Molecule Modulator Screening”
Sharpe and colleagues will develop a high-throughput screen to identify small molecule modulators of an immunoinhibitory pathway involved in multiple diseases, with the grant supporting the screening and initial chemistry efforts to determine structure–activity relationships of screening hits.

• José Halperin, HMS associate professor of medicine and head of the HMS Laboratory for Translational Research, and Gerhard Wagner, the Elkan Blout professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at HMS: “Translation Initiation Inhibitors for Cancer Therapy”
These groups are jointly developing inhibitors of mRNA translation initiation as anticancer agents. The Accelerator funding will support lead optimization and further preclinical testing of inhibitor compounds directed at two different targets within the translation initiation mechanism, the ternary and eIF4F complexes.

• Stephen Harrison, Howard Hughes investigator and HMS professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology and of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital Boston, and Gary Frey, HMS research fellow in biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology: “Fusion Inhibitors for HIV”
The Accelerator Fund will support the development of small molecule viral entry inhibitors of HIV, using a combination of structure-based drug design and medicinal chemistry to extend established structure–activity relationships and increase the potency of inhibitors.

For additional information on the Accelerator Fund, contact the Harvard Office of Technology Development at otd@harvard.edu or 617-496-3201 or visit the website at www.techaccelerator.harvard.edu. 

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