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CIMIT to award $5 million in research support

CIMIT, a non-profit organization that provides support to early-stage medical device researchers, has chosen the winning proposals as it prepares to extend $5 million in science awards to investigators at many of the area’s top healing institutions.

One of the organization’s key goals is to accelerate medical solutions for both military and civilian patients.

“Our goal, and we believe in it passionately, is to bring life-changing technology to patients as quickly as possible,” said John Parrish, M.D., founder and director of the Boston organization. “We are especially aware of the needs of soldiers wounded on the battlefield, and a number of grants will go to researchers who are responding to this need."

Dr. Parrish was a battlefield surgeon in Vietnam, and started CIMIT in part to accelerate the development of medical devices for patient care on both the battlefield and at home.

Of the 37 proposals that were chosen for its 2008 Awards Program, 22 potentially have military applications.

CIMIT is the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology. A non-profit consortium of Boston area teaching hospitals and engineering schools, CIMIT provides innovators with resources to explore, develop and implement novel technological solutions for today’s most urgent health-care problems.

The awards, aimed at innovation in health care, range from $40,000 to $100,000. CIMIT officials are offering as many awards as possible to promising researchers with the expectation that the investigators will gain further support from government or industry sources in the future.

Founded in 1998, CIMIT has received major funding through the Department of Defense. CIMIT also receives financial support from its member institutions, which include Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston Medical Center, Boston University, Children’s Hospital Boston, Newton-Wellesley Hospital and Partners HealthCare System.

CIMIT’s application process is unique in that it requires inter-institutional teams that must be multidisciplinary as well. Thus surgeons from MGH could be encouraged to link with engineers at MIT to produce a device that required the knowledge of experts from both institutions.

To date, CIMIT has supported more than 400 investigators. Accomplishments include 200 invention disclosures, 80 patent applications, 30 licenses issued and 11 companies formed.

CIMIT does not own the intellectual property developed in the research it supports. It helps launch ideas, and lets the investigative teams and the teaching hospitals reap the benefits.

“We’re very pleased with quality of proposals that we saw this year,” said Steven Schachter, M.D., an epilepsy specialist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center who chaired the selection committee. “The grants will enable researchers to launch early-stage research in areas that help patients in both military and civilian settings.”

Many applicant teams sought to research solutions with potential to benefit soldier populations, including wound healing, bone growth, and traumatic brain injury, vital areas of study for both military and civilian patients.

Among the teams chosen to receive awards is one led by Mark Horenstein, Ph.D., of Boston University, whose project is to demonstrate a system to inject medications through the skin without creating abrasions.

Another recipient is a team headed by Jonathan Winograd, M.D., of Massachusetts General Hospital and MIT, who will be developing a project “to test a new approach to augmenting the function of a damaged spinal cord.”

A team led by Felipe Fregni, M.D., Ph.D., Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Children’s Hospital Boston, is to evaluate electrical stimulation to reduce convulsions and seizures.