The annual Mount Sinai Innovation Awards Ceremony took place on October 28. A hybrid event, the ceremony honored researchers from across the System for various achievements and included two awards presented by MSIP: Inventor of the Year and Transaction of the Year. MSIP also recognized the winners of this year’s Mount Sinai Pitch Challenge, as well as the latest i3 Prism awardees.
Meet the Winners:
Inventor of the Year
The Inventor of the Year award was created to recognize an individual or collaborative investigator(s) within Mount Sinai whose research is making, or has the potential to make, significant positive and product-driven impacts on health. The 2024 winner was Nina Bhardwaj, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine (Hematology and Medical Oncology) and Urology, Director of Immunotherapy, and Medical Director of the Vaccine and Cell Therapy Laboratory (VCTL) at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Bhardwaj and the VCTL conducted research that led to the development of a cancer vaccine platform that utilizes neo-antigens, or new proteins created by cancers, to train a patient’s immune system to attack their cancer. These vaccines have the potential to be personalized for patients or to be manufactured as “off the shelf” therapies, depending on the type of cancer and the mutations they contain.
Transaction of the Year
The Transaction of the Year award recognizes a notable technology from Mount Sinai that represents a major breakthrough in research and a strong commercial partnership for advancement. This year, MSIP recognized two winners: GNOMX, a new company providing earlier and more accurate diagnostics and prognostics for infectious diseases and exposures to certain chemical or biologic agents; and a license for a malnutrition algorithm developed and deployed by Mount Sinai’s Clinical Data Science team.
GNOMX
Powered by Mount Sinai technology, GNOMX was created to commercialize technologies that were developed by Stuart Sealfon, MD, Glickenhaus Family Professor and Chairman Emeritus of the Department of Neurology at Icahn Mount Sinai, and colleagues under a $46 million of foundational research funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Epigenetic Characterization and Observation (ECHO) program. The company has developed proof of principle diagnostic data with clinical grade accuracy for acute Lyme disease, long COVID, and sepsis. GNOMX was recently awarded a $749,700 contract by the Division of Research, Innovation, and Ventures (DRIVe) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) to support the development of a diagnostic test to predict risk of post-discharge deterioration and hospital readmission of sepsis patients. Dr. Sealfon was recognized for this award.
Mount Sinai’s Clinical Data Science Team
The team developed and deployed a malnutrition algorithm to facilitate the faster identification and treatment of malnutrition in hospitalized patients. Mount Sinai received the 2024 Hearst Health Prize for this technology, for outstanding achievement in managing or improving health through the application of data science. The Mount Sinai inventors recognized for this award were: Robbie Freeman, RN, MSN, NE-BC, Vice President of Clinical Innovation and Chief Nursing Informatics Officer at Mount Sinai; Arash Kia, MD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative & Pain Medicine and Director of Clinical Data Science, Icahn Mount Sinai; Prem Timsina, IT Director, Mount Sinai; and Matthew Levin, MD, Associate Vice Chair of Research and Director of Research Informatics, Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative & Pain Medicine, and Director of the Clinical Data Science Team at Mount Sinai.
Mount Sinai Pitch Challenge Winners
The Pitch Challenge winners included three teams who won $33K each:
- Team lead: Mustafa Siddiq, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at Icahn Mount Sinai
- Technology: “Poly(pro-boldine),” focusing on drug development for spinal cord injury recovery, pioneering the sustained delivery of boldine to the central nervous system.
- Team Lead: Andy Ho Wing Chan, PhD, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Icahn Mount Sinai
- Technology: “SEIZEAR,” developing a non-invasive, in-ear device using EEG technology for seizure detection and monitoring.
- Team Lead: Lara Marcuse, MD, Professor of Neurology and Co-Director of the Mount Sinai Epilepsy Program
- Technology: “Seizurescope,” developing a wearable EEG device for accurate prediction of epileptic seizures.
i3 Prism:
i3 Prism offers early-stage technology commercialization funding to innovators and innovations that will support equitable provision of health care and help bring new solutions to patients and society while advancing technologies to the next level from a commercial perspective. This year’s awardees were:
- Lakshmi Shree Kulumani Mahadevan, MBBS, Neuropathology Clinical Fellow at Icahn Mount Sinai, developing a digital biomarker quantification tool for clinical diagnostics and therapeutic response prediction in gliomas.
- Magdalena Zak, PhD, Instructor of Medicine at Icahn Mount Sinai, developing cell-specific therapeutic mRNA for targeted anti-cancer therapies.
- Christy Megan, Biomedical Engineer at Mount Sinai BioDesign, developing a novel brachytherapy applicator for cervical cancer.
