Seed Grant Awards
Fall 2021 Collaborative Seed Grant Recipients
Project Lead | Collaborating PI | Affiliation | Title | Research Area |
Yingzi Yang, PhD | Jennifer Gibbs, DDS, PhD | Harvard School of Dental Medicine | Sensory nerve regulation of dentin repair in molars | Dental diseases |
Christian Brendel, PhD | Daniel Bauer, MD, PhD | Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Boston Children’s Hospital | Engineering and tracking quiescent human hematopoietic stem cells | Blood |
Spring 2021 Collaborative Seed Grant Recipients
Project Lead | Collaborating PI | Affiliation | Title | Research Area |
Stephan Kissler, PhD | Nika Danial, PhD | Joslin Diabetes Center/Dana-Farber Cancer Institute | Metabolic interplay between immune cells and pancreatic beta cells in type 1 diabetes | Diabetes |
Alan Cantor, MD, PhD | Jeffrey Moffitt, PhD | Boston Children's Hospital | Bone Marrow Spatial Transcriptomics to Enhance In Vitro Platelet Production from Stem Cell Sources | Blood |
Ruth Franklin, PhD | Fei Chen, PhD | Harvard Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology | Mechanisms of tissue regeneration following respiratory infection | Lung regeneration |
2020 Collaborative Seed Grant Recipients
Project Lead | Collaborating PI | Affiliation | Title | Research Area |
Shailesh Agarwal, MD | Vicki Rosen, PhD | Brigham and Women's Hospital/Harvard School of Dental Medicine | Transplantation of isogenic, gene-edited, biosensor-enabled hematopoietic stem cells to treat fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva (FOP) | Musculoskeletal |
Jia Liu, PhD | Richard Lee, MD | Harvard John A. Paulson School Of Engineering And Applied Sciences/Harvard Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology | Nanoelectronics-integrated cardiac organoids with defined cell types for online monitored and regulated transplantation | Cardiovascular |
Andrea McClatchey, PhD | Shannon Stott, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Re-engineering the (re)generation of the intrahepatic biliary system | Cancer/Liver regeneration |
2019 Seed Grant Recipients
Project Lead | Affiliation | Title | Research Area |
Suneet Agarwal, MD, PhD | Boston Children's Hospital | Enhancing stem cell self-renewal via novel telomerase modulators | Aging/Blood/Fibrosis |
Ruben Carrasco, MD, PhD | Dana Farber Cancer Institute | Mining the Wnt/β-catenin/BCL9 transcriptional complex for gastric cancer pathogenesis and therapy | Cancer |
Elliot L. Chaikof, MD, PhD | Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center | Immunoevasive engineered living blood vessels | Cardiovascular Diseases |
April Craft, PhD | Boston Children's Hospital | Testing efficacy of hESC-derived cartilage in large animal model | Musculoskeletal |
Zhixun Dou, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Empowering immunotherapy to treat age-associated diseases | Aging |
Rakesh Karmacharya, MD, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Modeling synpatic pruning in schizophrenia with iPSC-derived microglia and neurons | Nervous System (Psychiatric) |
Hongmei Mou, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Regenerative capacity of human iPSC-derived airway basal cells | Airway |
Mustafa Sahin, MD, PhD | Boston Children's Hospital | Examining non-cell autonomous effects in Tuberous Sclerosis Complex using neuronal spheroids from human iPSCs | Nervous System |
2017 Seed Grant Recipients
Project Lead | Affiliation | Title | Research Area |
Michael Choi, MD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Cell therapy for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease using reprogrammed hepatic stellate cells locked into a quiescent-like state | Fibrosis |
Jenna Galloway, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Generation of a tendon transgenic reporter in human pluripotent stem cells for regenerative medicine strategies | Musculoskeletal |
Ya-Chieh Hsu, PhD | Harvard University | Factors that promote wound healing during chemotherapy | Skin |
Vikram Khurana, MD, PhD | Brigham and Women's Hospital | Identifying and reversing pathologies in neurons derived from a Parkinson's disease kindred harboring mutant (E46K) alpha-synuclein | Neuro |
Jennifer Lewis, PhD | Harvard Medical School/ Wyss Institute | Maturation of kidney organoids under fluidic shear stress | Kidney |
Lee Rubin, PhD | Harvard University | Establishing a screening platform to chemically reprogram human cells for cell therapy and drug discovery | Fibrosis/ Musculoskeletal |
Amar Sahay, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Characterization of novel secreted pro-neurogenic enzyme | Neuro |
Tobias Schatton, PhD, PharmD and Matthew Ramsey, PhD | Brigham and Women's Hospital | Cancer stem cell-intrinsic role of the immune checkpoint receptor PD-1 in squamous cell carcinoma | Cancer/Skin |
Rich Sherwood, PhD | Brigham and Women's Hospital | Systematic profiling of combinatorial signaling pathway effects on stem cell differentiation | Cell |
2016 Seed Grant Recipients
Project Lead | Affiliation | Title | Research Area |
Daniel Bauer, MD, PhD | Boston Children's Hospital | Targeted Disruption of the BCL11A erythroid Enhancer in Hematopoietic Stem Cells for Genetic Therapy of the beta-Hemoglobinopathies | Blood Disease |
Fernando Camargo, PhD | Boston Children’s Hospital | Small molecule manipulation of Hippo signaling for regeneration | Epithelial Regeneration and Wound Healing |
April Craft, PhD | Boston Children's Hospital | Preclinical development of engineered hPSC-derived tissues for articular cartilage repair | Musculoskeletal Disease |
Yick Fong, PhD | Brigham and Women's Hospital | Identifying mechanisms of discern ribonucleoprotein dysfunction in stem cell disorders | Blood Disease |
Maria Lehtinen, PhD | Boston Children's Hospital | A synthetic cerebrospinal fluid supplement to protect hippocampal stem cells from chemotherapy | Cancer, Neurological Disease |
Ryuji Morizane, MD, PhD | Brigham and women's Hospital | Modeling glomerular disease in vascularized kidney organoids derived from human pluripotent stem cells | Kidney Disease |
George Murphy, MD and Markus Frank, MD | Brigham and Women's Hospital/ Boston Children’s Hospital | A stem cell-based cutaneous bioprothesis | Skin Disease, Skin Regeneration |
Christine Seidman, MD | Harvard Medical School | Developing Trypanosome cruzi-infected iPSC-derived cardiomyocytes as a model for Chagas cardiomyopathy | Cardiovascular Disease, Infection |
Thomas Serwold, PhD | Joslin Diabetes Center | Factors that promote thymus regeneration | Aging, Type 1 Diabetes, Autoimmunity |
2015 Seed Grant Recipients
Project Lead | Affiliation | Title | Research Area |
Carla Kim, PhD | Boston Children's Hospital | Stem cell differentiation tools to reveal new targets in cystic fibrosis | Cystic Fibrosis |
Amar Sahay, PhD and Rakesh Karmacharya, MD, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Generation and characterization of human hippocampal CA3 pyramidal neurons | Neuroscience |
Mustafa Sahin, MD, PhD | Boston Children's Hospital | Autistic neurons in a dish | Autism |
David Williams, MD and Scott Snapper, MD, PhD | Boston Children’s Hospital | Hematopoietic stem cell gene therapy for very early onset Inflammatory Bowel Disease due to IL 10-receptor deficiency | Inflammatory Bowel Disease |
Andreas Herrlich, MD, PhD | Brigham and Women's Hospital | Inhibition of ADAM17-dependent pathways in kidney fibrosis | Kidney Disease |
2013 Seed Grant Recipients
Project Lead | Affiliation | Title | Research Area |
Reza Abdi, MD | Brigham and Women’s Hospital | The targeted delivery of mesenchymal Stem cells for the treatment of type 1 diabetes | Diabetes |
Suneet Agarwal, MD, PhD | Boston Children’s Hospital | Manipulating heteroplasmy in mitochondrial genetic diseases | Mitochondrial Genetic Diseases |
Sangmi Chung, PhD | McLean Hospital | Human medial ganglionic eminence cells as a potential source for novel cell-based therapy for temporal lobe epilepsy | Epilepsy |
Natasha Frank, MD | Boston Children’s Hospital | ABCB5+ limbal stem cells for LSCD therapy | Eye Diseases |
Jenna Galloway, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Tendon regeneration in zebrafish | Tendon and Ligament Injuries |
Tatsuya Kobayashi, MD, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Characterization and manipulation of articular cartilage chondrocytes as stem/progenitor cells | Osteoarthritis |
Maria Kontaridis, PhD and Amy Roberts, MD | Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/ Boston Children’s Hospital | Elucidation of the epigenetic, transcriptional, and differentiation abnormalities underlying RASopathy disorders in iPS cells | Genetic Diseases |
David Milan, MD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Novel method to map human genetic disease using induced pluripotent stem cells | Genetic Diseases |
Jayaraj Rajagopal, MD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Developing humanized mouse models of respiratory disease | Respiratory Disease |
2012 Seed Grants
Project Lead | Affiliation | Title | Research Area |
Susan Dymecki, MD, PhD | Harvard Medical School | Reverse engineering serotonin neuron subtypes | Neuronal Disorders |
Stephen Haggarty, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Characterization of iPSC-derived neurons from patients with intellectual disability: role of TCF4 in Pitt-Hopkins Syndrome | Neuronal Disorders |
Bernhard Kuhn, MD | Boston Children's Hospital | Controlling the differentiation of ES and iPS-derived heart muscle cells | Cardiovascular Disease |
Rohit Kulkarni, MD, PhD | Joslin Diabetes Center | Significance of MODY genes in the differentiation of human iPS cells into insulin-secreting beta cells | Diabetes |
Cammie Lesser, MD, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Non-viral transdifferentiation of fibroblasts to cardiomyocytes | Cardiovascular Diseases |
Michael Mannstadt, MD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Directed differentiation of ES and iPS cells towards parathyroid cells | Endocrine Disorders |
Thomas Serwold, PhD | Joslin Diabetes Center | Identification and functional characterization of thymic epithelial stem cells and progenitors | Immunology |
Matthew Steinhauser, MD | Brigham and Women’s Hospital | Quantifying human cell division with a heavy water tracer | Cellular Imaging |
Clifford Tabin, PhD | Harvard Medical School | Analysis of blastema cell heterogeneity by RNA-seq | Tissue Regeneration & Repair |
Tracy Young-Pearse, PhD | Brigham and Women’s Hospital | Establishment of a single cell assay to screen individual cell types for efficacy of putative small molecule drugs | Single-Cell Analysis |
2011 Seed Grants
Project Lead | Affiliation | Title | Research Area |
Wolfram Goessling, MD, PhD | Brigham and Women's Hospital | Functional characterization of genes associated with abnormal liver tests for liver development and repair – a post-GWAS approach | Liver Disease |
Stanley Shaw, MD, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Small molecule inhibitors of p16INK4a: proof-of-concept for the generation of iPS cells via a high-throughput screening platform | Cardiovascular Disease |
Carla F. Kim, PhD | Boston Children's Hospital | Imprinted gene regulation in lung and skin stem cell self-renewal | Cancer |
Elliot Chaikof, MD, PhD | Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center | Engineered fascia for stem cell therapy in hernia repair | Hernia |
Rakesh Karmacharya, MD, PhD | McLean Hospital | Identification of cellular signatures for schizophrenia in iPSC-derived neuronal cells | Neuropsychiatric Diseases |
Sandra McAllister, PhD | Brigham and Women's Hospital | Understanding how systemic factors govern breast cancer stem cell plasticity and malignancy | Cancer |
Chien-Wei (Eric) Liao, MD, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Transcriptome and functional analysis of neural crest stem cell | Genetic Diseases |
Xu Wu, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Controlling stem cell self-renewal and differentiation using small molecule modulators of hippo signaling pathway | Cancer |
Jordan A. Kreidberg, MD | Boston Children's Hospital | Reprogramming ES and IPS cells into kidney progenitor cells | Kidney Disease |
Joy Wu, MD, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Chemical screening of pluripotent stem cells for modifiers of mesenchymal lineage commitment | Osteoporosis |
2010 Seed Grants
Project Lead | Affiliation | Title | Research Area |
Andrew Brack, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | The regulation and functional capacity of skeletal muscle satellite cells in dystrophic muscle | Musculoskeletal Disease |
C. Geoffrey Burns, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Chemical genetic screen for modifiers of cardiac stem cell function during zebrafish embryogenesis | Cardiovascular Disease |
Cassandra Extavour, PhD | Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University | Exploring germline regeneration: a transcriptome approach to understanding transdifferentiation of somatic cells into germ cells | Genetic Diseases |
Richard I. Gregory, PhD | Boston Children's Hospital | Molecular and cellular function of a novel stem cell factor Trim71 | Genetic Diseases |
Craig P. Hunter, PhD | Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University | Control of stem cell homeostasis by the dsRNA transporter SidT2 | Genetic Diseases |
Akio Kobayashi, PhD | Brigham and Women's Hospital | Cell fate decision in nephron progenitor cells of the kidney | Kidney Diseases |
Andrew Lassar, PhD | Harvard Medical School | How FGF signals maintain phenotypic plasticity in mesenchymal stem cells | Musculoskeletal Disease |
Zhe Li, PhD | Brigham and Women's Hospital | Luminal progenitors as cells of origin for breast cancer | Cancer |
Jayaraj Rajagopal, MD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Identification of factors that direct the differentiation of ES Cells into lung endoderm progenitors using developmentally guided growth factors and chemical screening platforms | Lung Disease |
Judith Arunodhaya Steen, PhD | Boston Children's Hospital | Quantitative proteomics to reveal progenitor specific markers on the cell surface | Cancer |
2009 Seed Grants
Program Lead | Affiliation | Title | Research Area |
Wolfram Goessling, MD, PhD and Trista E. North, PhD | Brigham and Women's Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center | Isolating novel regulators of liver regeneration through a chemical genetic modifier screen in zebrafish | Liver Disease |
Mark Damone Johnson, MD, PhD | Brigham and Women's Hospital | Cancer stem cells in meningiomas | Cancer |
David M. Langenau, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Imaging notch pathway requirements for symmetric vs. asymmetric self-renewal divisions in embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma | Cancer |
Sharad Ramanathan, PhD | Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University | Studying decision making in single embryonic stem cells | Bioengineering |
Derrick J. Rossi, PhD | Immune Disease Institute | In vivo reprogramming of lineage committed progenitor cells to hematopoietic stem cells | Blood Disease |
Yu Hua Tseng, PhD | Joslin Diabetes Center | Identification and significance of brown fat progenitor cells | Diabetes |
David Weinstock, MD | Dana-Farber Cancer Institute | DNA double-strand break repair in human pluripotent cells | Cancer |
Paul B. Yu, MD, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Identification of osteogenic progenitors in heterotopic ossification | Musculoskeletal Disease |
2008 Seed Grants
Program Lead | Affiliation | Title | Research Area |
Paola Arlotta, PhD | Harvard University Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology | Directed differentiation of neural progenitors and iPS Cells into corticospinal motor neurons | Nervous System Disease |
Sangeeta Bhatia, MD, PhD | Brigham and Women's Hospital | High-throughput platform for probing inductive interactions in embryonic stem cell differentiation | Bioengineering |
Caroline E. Burns, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Lineage analysis of cardiac progenitor cells in vivo | Cardiovascular Disease |
Stephen Haggarty, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Characterization on the Wnt/GSK-3beta pathway in fragile X syndrome using a human induced pluripotent stem cell model | Genetic Diseases |
Xue (Sean) Li, MD, PhD | Boston Children's Hospital | Renal progenitor cells: Genetic studies of Eya1 protein phosphatase | Kidney Disease |
Judy Lieberman, PhD | Immune Disease Institute | An siRNA screen for genes that regulate breast cancer stem cells | Cancer |
William T. Pu, MD | Boston Children's Hospital | Epicardial cardiac progenitors in the developing and adult heart | Cardiovascular Disease |
Zhong Wang, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling in mouse and human ES cell pluripotency | Cardiovascular Disease |
Rebecca Wingert, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Molecular networks regulating the segment fate decisions of renal progenitors | Kidney Disease |
Sean Wu, MD, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Functional biology of induced pluripotent stem cell-derived organ | Bioengineering |
2007 Seed Grants
Project Lead | Affiliation | Title | Research Area |
Li Chai, MD | Brigham and Women's Hospital | SALL4 Dependent Transcriptional Network in Human and Murine Embryonic Stem Cells | Cancer |
Zheng-Yi Chen, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Inner ear stem cell genes: identification, function and role in hair cell regeneration | Hearing Loss |
Dieter Egli, PhD | Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University | Derivation of patient specific human embryonic stem cell lines by chromosome transfer into human zygotes and blastomeres | Genetic Diseases |
Benjamin Humphreys, MD, PhD | Brigham and Women's Hospital | Epithelial Cell Lineage Analysis During Renal Repair | Kidney Disease |
Richard I. Gregory, PhD | Children's Hospital Boston | Promoting stem cell expansion through chemical inhibition of microRNA-mediated cell differentiation | Genetic Diseases |
Carla F. Kim, PhD | Children's Hospital Boston | Lineage tracing of lung stem cells in vivo & in vitro | Lung Disease |
Kameran Lashkari, MD | The Schepens Eye Research Institute | Application of retinal progenitor cells derived from eyes with persistent fetal vasculature to replace lost retinal ganglion cells in clinical glaucoma | Eye Diseases |
Stuart H. Orkin, MD | Dana-Farber Cancer Institute | Down Syndrome, somatic mutation of GATA-1, and acute megakaryoblastic (M7 AML) leukemia | Cancer |
Sridhar Rao, MD, PhD Ibrahim Domian, MD, PhD | Dana-Farber Cancer Institute Massachusetts General Hospital | Identification of Master Transcriptional Regulators for Early Lineage Commitment | Cancer |
Sabina Signoretti, MD | Brigham & Women's Hospital | Identification of stem cells in prostate and bladder epithelia | Urinary Diseases |
2006 Seed Grants
Project Lead | Affiliation | Title | Research Area |
Raymond Anchan, MD, PhD | Brigham and Women's Hospital | Derivation of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) from blastomere biopsies | Genetic Diseases |
Scott A. Armstrong, MD, PhD | Children's Hospital Boston | Development of a hematopoietic stem cell and lineage differentiation map and repository | Blood Diseases |
Bradley Bernstein, MD PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Epigenetic mechanisms of ES cell pluripotency | Genetic Diseases |
Keith Blackwell, MD | Joslin Diabetes Center | Functions of the oocyte RNA-binding P-body protein CAR-1 | Diabetes |
David Breault, MD, PhD | Children's Hospital Boston | Characterization of Putative Intestinal Progenitor/Stem Cells using mTert-GFP Transgenic Mice | Gastrointestinal Diseases |
Rona Carroll, PhD | Brigham and Women's Hospital | Mesenchymal stem cell-based therapy for human brain tumors | Cancer |
Konrad Hochedlinger, PhD | Harvard University Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology | Analysis of the pluripotency factors Oct4, Nanog and Sox2 in Adult Mice | Cancer |
Hanno Hock, MD, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Deciphering the Biology of the Transcriptional Repressor Tel/Etv6 in Hematopoietic Stem Cells | Blood Diseases |
Charles Lin, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | In-vivo Imaging of Hemotopoietic Stem Cell Niche | Blood Diseases |
Anjana Rao, PhD | Immune Disease Institute | Identifying DNA demethylases | Genetic Diseases |
Rosalind Segal, MD, PhD | Dana-Farber Cancer Institute | Symmetric and Asymmetric Proliferation of Glioma Stem Cells | Cancer |
Yaming Wang, MD | Brigham and Women's Hospital | Evaluation of the regeneration capacity of msx1-induced dedifferentiated cells | Genetic Diseases |
Jing-Wei Xiong, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | The Hemangioblast Development in Zebrafish | Cancer |
2005 Seed Grants
Project Lead | Affiliation | Title | Research Area |
Nabeel Bardeesy, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | he pancreatic adenocarcinoma cell-of-origin | Cancer |
Dong Feng Chen, MD, PhD | Schepens Eye Research Institute | Repairing retinal disease and damage by neural stem/progenitor cell transplantation | Eye Diseases |
Alan James Davidson, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Functional genomics approach to identify genes expressed in the kidney | Kidney Diseases |
Kevin C. Eggan, PhD | Harvard University Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology | Derivation of Parkinson's disease specific human embryonic stem cell lines | Nervous System Diseases |
Niels Geijsen, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | In vitro germ cell development and epigenetic reprogramming using human and murine ES cells | Genetic Diseases |
Rohit Kulkarni, MD, PhD | Joslin Diabetes Center | Identification of beta cell growth factor | Diabetes |
Jeannie Lee, MD, PhD | Massachusetts General Hospital | Analysis of X-chromosome inactivation in human embryonic stem cells | Genetic Diseases |
M. William Lensch, PhD | Children's Hospital Boston | The analysis of complex genetic syndromes using disease-specific human embryonic stem cell lines | Genetic Diseases |
Craig Michelli, PhD | Harvard Medical School | Progenitor cells in the adult Drosophila gut: understanding tissue renewal in endoderm lineages | Gastrointestinal Diseases |
Hanna Mikkola, MD, PhD | Dana-Farber Cancer Institute | Placenta as a niche for hematopoietic stem cell development | Blood Diseases |
Rosario Sanchez-Pernaute, MD, PhD | McLean Hospital | Characterization, transplantation and functional analysis of dopamine neuronal progenitors derived from primate and human embryonic stem cells | Nervous System Diseases |
Amy Wagers, PhD | Harvard University Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology | Biology and function of adult skeletal muscle precursor cells | Musculoskeletal Diseases |