A large and diverse group of individuals and teams from the Mount Sinai Health System were honored for their contributions to research, technology, medicine, and health care at the third annual Mount Sinai Innovation Awards ceremony, held on Monday, October 16, in conjunction with the SinaInnovations conference.
Yiannis Ioannou, PhD, Inventor of the Year, right, with Erik Lium, PhD, Senior Vice President, Mount Sinai Innovation Partners.
Yiannis Ioannou, PhD, Associate Professor, Genetics and Genomic Sciences, and Gene and Cell Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, received the Inventor of the Year Award for work in lysosomal storage diseases. Dr. Ioannou’s work led to the first treatment for Fabry disease, in collaboration with Robert Desnick, MD, PhD, Dean for Genetics and Genomic Medicine, and the discovery of small molecules that may serve as the basis for novel therapies for the treatment of numerous lysosomal storage diseases. His work as an inventor-collaborator with Mount Sinai Innovation Partners has culminated in the launch of a new company in partnership with institutional investors. Watch the video about the Inventor of the Year
Winners of the Faculty Idea Prize, Hala Harony-Nicolas, PhD, left, and Lior Zangi, PhD, right, with Lakshmi A. Devi, PhD, Dean for Academic Development and Enrichment.
Hala Harony-Nicolas, PhD, and Lior Zangi, PhD, received the Faculty Idea Prize for their novel RNA-based approach to efficiently deliver neuropeptides to the brain, using modified mRNA technology. Dr. Harony-Nicolas is Assistant Professor, Psychiatry, and a Seaver Fellow at the Seaver Autism Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Dr. Zangi is Assistant Professor, Medicine (Cardiology), and Genetics and Genomic Sciences.
Janice L. Gabrilove, MD, the James F. Holland, MD Professor of Medicine and Oncological Sciences, with some of the winners of the Dean’s Healthcare System Team Science Award.
The Dean’s Healthcare System Team Science Award, established to acknowledge the importance of interdisciplinary teams in translational research, went to 13 investigators at the Center for Personalized Cancer Therapeutics. The team built a personalized “fruit fly avatar” using transgenic technology to identify and optimize candidate drug combinations for individual patient-derived tumors in an effort to provide an individualized treatment plan that best aligns with the patient’s own disease biology.
The winners were Marshall Posner, MD; Celina Su-Ping Ang, MD; Erdem Bangi, PhD; Joshua Brody, MD; Ross Cagan, PhD; Michael Donovan, MD, PhD; Matthew Galsky, MD; Sara Kim, PharmD; Krzysztof Misiukiewicz, MD, MSCR; Eric Schadt, PhD; Isaiah Selkridge; Andrew Uzilov, PhD; and Kendra Yum, PharmD.
A group of 18 innovators, including collaborators from other institutions, received the 4D Technology Development Program Award for four projects that use new technology:
- Next-generation bandages for improved wound healing: Evren Azeloglu, PhD, and Smiti Bhattacharya, MSc, with collaborators Michael Bradley; Matthew De Santis; Roman Scicchitano; Addison Shableski; and Safakcan Tuncdemir, PhD
- Diagnostic urine biomarker for detecting diabetic nephropathy progression: Ilse Daehn, PhD; Steven Coca, DO; Girish Nadkarni, MD; and Liping Yu
- Advanced technology to improve the treatment and quality of life of atrial fibrillation patients: Ya-El Mandel-Portnoy, PhD, with collaborator Gregor Schwartz, PhD
- Internet-based patient activation intervention to improve referrals for cancer screening (PAIRS): Jamilia Sly, PhD; Brittney Henry; Lina Jandorf; Sarah Miller, PsyD; and Jason Rogers.
Eight individuals received Trainee Innovation Idea Awards, which highlight innovative research ideas from the Mount Sinai trainee communities that could potentially be translated into a marketable product. They are:
- MD and MD/PhD students Theodore Pak, Mark Finkelstein, Kathleen Li, and Suhavi Tucker: The CareTeam app for clinical protocols
- PhD student Rayees Rahman: Rapid identification of causative pathogens of infection
- Postdoctoral fellow Gaurav Verma, PhD: Noninvasive detection of metabolic abnormalities in brain tumors
- House staff physician Pavis Laengvejkal, MD, with collaborator Weeraporn Srisung, MD: Cloud-based health care platform.