Harrington Discovery Institute announces 2015 partnership scholars

The Harrington Discovery Institute at University Hospitals in Cleveland, Ohio - part of The Harrington Project for Discovery & Development - has announced 2015 Harrington Scholars selected in collaboration with R&D partners University of Oxford, Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF), and Foundation Fighting Blindness.

These Harrington Discovery Institute collaborations offer selected Harrington grant winners funding and expert pharmaceutical guidance to move discoveries along the path to drug development. The work of these scholars holds great promise but is not advanced enough to attract drug development funding from the pharmaceutical industry. This translational gap is referred to as the "Valley of Death." The mission of the institute is to bridge the valley by facilitating the journey of new medication development.

This is the first year of a collaboration with Foundation Fighting Blindness, named for founder Gordon Gund. The inaugural Gund-Harrington Scholars are:

• Albert La Spada, MD, PhD, University of California, San Diego, whose work focuses on retinal degeneration, specifically the development of a novel treatment for Spinocerebellar ataxia type 7.
• Konstantin Petrukhin, PhD, Columbia University, whose work focuses on juvenile-onset macular degeneration, especially the treatment for Stargardt disease.
• Donald Zack, MD, PhD, The Johns Hopkins University, whose work focuses on gene therapy for autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa (ADRP).

The Harrington Discovery Institute is in its second year of a collaboration with the University of Oxford. The 2015 Oxford-Harrington Scholars are:

• Helen McShane, MBBS, PhD, whose work focuses on the development of a novel vaccination approach for tuberculosis.
• Claudia Monaco, MD, PhD, whose work focuses on anti-inflammatory agents for the treatment of cardiovascular disease.

A collaboration with Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation is now in its third year. The 2015 ADDF-Harrington Scholars are:

• Carol Colton, PhD, Principal Investigator, and James Burke, MD, PhD, Physician Collaborator, Duke University, whose work focuses on the immune response in the brain that appears to be linked to characteristics of Alzheimer's disease.
• Jerri M. Rook, PhD, Principal Investigator, and Paul Newhouse, MD, Physician Collaborator, Vanderbilt University, whose work focuses on a novel compound for the treatment of symptoms associated with Alzheimer's disease.

"The Cleveland-based Harrington Discovery Institute currently supports promising discoveries in North America and the U.K.," said Jonathan Stamler, MD, Director of the Harrington Discovery Institute and Robert S. and Sylvia K. Reitman Family Foundation Distinguished Chair in Cardiovascular Innovation and Director of the Institute for Transformative Molecular Medicine at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and UH Case Medical Center. "Our support comes through a blend of entrepreneurial savvy and pharmaceutical experience in bringing therapeutics to market. We are agnostic about geography and institution - we look to the end point of advancing products to market to address devastating conditions."

"We at the Foundation Fighting Blindness share Ron Harrington's vision for driving translational research to move promising therapies out of the lab and into human studies, and are excited about our partnership with the Harrington Discovery Institute," said Gordon Gund, chairman and co-founder of the Foundation Fighting Blindness. "The Harrington Discovery Institute's strong depth of expertise in pharmaceutical product development addresses the most critical gap in getting treatments out to the millions with diseases who desperately need them."

Harrington Discovery Institute grant recipients receive funding in addition to strategic project management support from the Harrington Discovery Institute's Innovation Support Center. This includes consulting and management services from experienced pharmaceutical development professionals; as well as regulatory, intellectual property, and business development assistance.

"I am delighted that Professors McShane and Monaco have been selected as the next Oxford-Harrington Scholars," said Professor Sir John Bell, Regius Professor of Medicine, University of Oxford. "Their involvement in this relatively new collaboration between Oxford and the Harrington Discovery Institute is exciting and builds on the success of our first scholar, Professor Simmons. The programme allows clinician scientist at Oxford to work with drug development teams to further develop their research to real-world outcomes."

Harrington Scholars also have facilitated access to BioMotiv, a for-profit commercialization company associated with The Harrington Project for Discovery & Development, and aligned with the Harrington Discovery Institute in mission and structure. BioMotiv was created to further advance discoveries by academic researchers in areas of unmet need.

"Our partnership with the Harrington Discovery Institute allows us to leverage our combined expertise and resources to advance potential treatments for Alzheimer's disease," said Howard Fillit, MD, Founding Executive Director and Chief Science Officer at the ADDF. "We are excited to support these innovative drug discovery programs. The goal of these awards is to increase the number of Alzheimer's drug targets in the pipeline and accelerate their development. These two teams have been successful with novel approaches to the disease, and we are encouraged by their results."

Provided by University Hospitals Case Medical Center