NIH has awarded High-Risk, High-Reward Grants to three Emory University researchers https://whsc.emory.edu/news/index.html, to pursue highly innovative research with the potential for broad impact.
The program awarded 106 grants for about $329 million over five years to support research proposals that due to their risk, may struggle in the traditional peer review process
As part of the High-Risk, High-Reward Grant Program, Emory Researcher Chethan Pandarinath received a grant for $2.4 million to support his team’s launch of a clinical trial where sensors will be implanted into the brains of paralyzed people with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).
According to Researcher Pandarinath, the long term goal is to reconnect the brain and the body for patients who are paralyzed not only from ALS but from strokes, spinal cord injuries or other serious neurological disorders.
For the clinical trials, Pandarinath will pair AI tools with existing implantable brain sensors to test how well they work for patients. The implants are devices already used for deep brain stimulation for Parkinson’s patients.
In addition to the grant award to Researcher Pandarinath, other awardees included Ravi Bellamkonda receiving the award for his crosscutting work using electrical fields to treat a particularly aggressive pediatric cancer, and Researcher Candace Fleischer’s NIH New Innovator Award for her proposal to use magnetic resonance imaging in new ways to study metabolic disease.
For more information, contact Jennifer Johnson McEwen at jrjohn9@emory.edu.