Innovation Initiative

The University of Michigan Endowment for the Basic Sciences hosts an annual competition for pilot funding for innovative projects in the biomedical sciences. This Innovation Initiative is focused on fueling interdisciplinary team science and potentially transformative research from the very beginning.

Eligible applicants must hold an instructional track faculty appointment (at any level), and at least one team member must hold their primary appointment in an EBS unit.

The Innovation Initiative launched in 2017, when 14 teams received a total of $1 million in one-year grants.

2017 Funded Projects Include

Preclinical Study of Notch Inhibition Resistance in Glioblastoma Treatment
Drs. Fan, Meng, Muraszko

Sperm Protamine Proteins: A potential novel carrier of epigenetic memory
Drs. Hammoud, Mueller, Freddolino, Zhang

Engineering Heart Tissue via Cardiac Reprogramming
Drs. Putnam, Si

Predicting the responsiveness of human microbiomes to resistant starch
Drs. Koropatkin, Martens, Schmidt

Feasibility of fMRI in Argus II Implant Patients
Drs. Weiland, Noll, Jayasundera

Global profiling of protein-protein interactions in E. coli biofilms using advanced crosslinkingbased mass spectrometry
Drs. Freddolino, Chapman, Andrews

Targeting of Micronutrient Dependency in Colon Cancer
Drs. Shah, Lyssiotis

Epigenetic Dysregulation in Human Glioma Stem Cells by a Long Non-coding RNA
Drs. Lowenstein, Kalantry

Virulence Metabolites of Bacterial Pathogens
Drs. Hanna, Sherman

Single cell approaches to understand the molecular basis of epigenetic clonal variability
Drs. Ragunathan, Bailey

Targeting Metabolic Trafficking of Exosomes between Tumor Microenvironment and Cancer Cells
Drs. Nagrath, Xu

Understanding a Key Pathway in the Stress Response: Development of High-Density Neural Probes and Biosensor Readouts for the Intact Adrenal Gland
Drs. Stuenkel, Anantharam, Seymour, Chestek, Satin, Kennedy, Holz

Using Machine Learning to Quantify the Antiepileptic Effects of the Ketogenic Diet
Drs. Murphy, Stacey

The EBS will open the application for its next round of Innovation Awards in spring 2018.