Foundational breakthroughs enabled by government research grants lead to technologies changing patients’ lives for the better
Why has the U.S. government historically awarded grants for fundamental research when the results aren’t guaranteed to have near-term societal impact? This topic has gotten much attention in recent months, with non-scientists questioning the value of spending taxpayer dollars on what they may deem as esoteric work.
Researchers spend a considerable amount of time preparing extensive materials for grant applications, which then go through a rigorous, multi-step review process. Only a small percentage of proposals eventually receive funding. While it’s true that there’s no guarantee of immediate public benefit, it’s also true that crucial early-stage discoveries, which often come from unexpected places, spawn developments that have a real-world impact further down the line.
Take the microbiologist Thomas Dale Brock, who was intrigued by his observation that microbes were living in the hot springs at Yellowstone National Park. Curious about how life could thrive under such harsh conditions, he applied for a grant from the National Science Foundation. The three-year grant allowed him and his team to isolate the bacteria, and ten years later, scientists found that the bacterium’s DNA-replicating polymerase enzyme could withstand extreme heat. This eventually became the basis for the now ubiquitous polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology, which is used to quickly and precisely replicate DNA in a test tube. The use of PCR has pervaded all areas of biomedical and fundamental biological research and enabled milestones in medicine, such as the mapping of the Human Genome, the detection of bacteria or viruses such as AIDS and COVID-19, and the diagnosis of many diseases, without which treatment would not be possible.
If Brock’s seemingly basic research on bacteria hadn’t been funded, society would certainly have suffered, even if that wasn’t clear at the time of his initial grant application.
At the Wyss Institute, our focus isn’t on fundamental research, it’s on translational research. We are developing and de-risking technologies, which in one way or another have their origins in fundamental research discoveries, and readying them for commercialization, so they can improve the health of patients and our planet. However, even at these more translational stages, we receive federal grants for ambitious projects. Along the way, researchers make discoveries that take a sometimes-winding path to have an unexpected impact in new areas.
For the past 75 years, collaboration between the government and academia has supported the greatest advances in science and medicine in the history of the world.
“For the past 75 years, collaboration between the government and academia has supported the greatest advances in science and medicine in the history of the world. We are the magnet for the world’s best and brightest young scientists who become future citizens. This is a positive feedback loop that makes America stronger and life better for all,” said Wyss Founding Director Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., who is also the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
Follow the stories of three different projects, from government grant to technology development to patient impact, powered by The Wyss Effect: core scientific breakthroughs that move science forward to create a positive impact for life on earth.
Turning new genome engineering techniques into a solution for the organ donor shortage
In 2010, researchers, including Wyss Core Faculty member George Church, Ph.D., were awarded a grant from the National Institute of Health (NIH) to develop cutting-edge genetic engineering methods and use them to identify genetic variations that control gene expression. Based on findings from work supported by this grant, members of Church’s lab used their gene editing system to inactivate many copies of a virus found in the genome of pigs, opening the door for pig-to-human xenotransplantation. This work was commercialized by eGenesis, which has now provided three pig kidneys that were successfully transplanted into humans.
Using a better understanding of infant breathing rhythms to develop a treatment for newborn babies
Back in 1993, a grant from the NIH to study irregular breathing rhythms propelled a cascade of events that led researchers to better understand and model the behavior of neural pacemakers in neonates. This was instrumental in allowing former Wyss Faculty member David Paydarfar, M.D., to develop mathematical and predictive models of breathing instability and develop approaches to predict when a disruption was about to occur. Wyss researchers used this to build and test a therapeutic device to avoid apnea of prematurity and help opioid-exposed newborns. Prapela commercialized this work, and the FDA recently granted their vibrating mattress de novo clearance.
Leveraging the tools for studying pathogen tolerance to create hope for rare disease patients
As part of its THoR (Technologies for Host Resilience) program, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded a Wyss Institute team led by Founding Director Donald Ingber, M.D., Ph.D., a grant in 2016 to understand why some people can resist infection with pathogens and which biological mechanisms are responsible for their resilience. An AI-enabled computational approach was born that, two years later, was further advanced in the pursuit of an even more ambitious goal: to find out how to chemically induce a state of biostasis, or suspended animation, which in the future could buy time to get disaster and combat victims the help they need to be treated. Tools developed as part of these programs were licensed to Unravel Biosciences. The company is finding solutions for rare genetic diseases. In May 2024, Unravel received Orphan Drug Designation from the FDA for vorinostat as a treatment for Rett syndrome and is set to begin a clinical trial in Colombia.
Though the future impact of these government grants may not have been immediately apparent at the moment they were awarded, there is no question that the support they provided had life-changing consequences, like taking a man suffering from end-stage kidney disease off dialysis for the first time in over two years, keeping opioid-exposed newborns safe, and providing a new solution and optimism for patients with rare diseases like Rett syndrome. So, while we can’t predict precisely where today’s grants will lead, we do know that without them, we might miss out on starting the journey to groundbreaking medical and environmental advancements.
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