Raymond Schinazi, PhD

Scientists whose revolutionary treatments have cured millions of people with hepatitis C and restored sight to patients with a rare form of blindness were among keynote speakers at the seventh annual SinaInnovations conference, held in Stern Auditorium during two consecutive days in October.

Innovation in science and medicine was the theme of this year’s SinaInnovations conference. The event highlighted the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai’s commitment to groundbreaking research and concluded its yearlong 50th anniversary celebration.

“This conference exemplifies Mount Sinai’s mission to produce the great translational research that improves the lives of our patients through innovation and entrepreneurship,” Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and President for Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Health System, said as he opened the event.

Katherine A. High, MD

Keynote speaker Raymond Schinazi, PhD, Director of the Center for AIDS Research at the Emory University School of Medicine, spoke about his part in developing an antiviral treatment for hepatitis C that has had a 96 percent cure rate and is considered to be one of the greatest successes in modern medicine. Dr. Schinazi also helped develop TRUVADA for PrEP®, a prophylactic drug that enables people to protect themselves before coming into contact with HIV-1. His next priority, he said, will be  developing a cure for hepatitis B, which affects 400 million people worldwide. “We can do this,” Dr. Schinazi said.

Katherine A. High, MD, President of Spark Therapeutics, spoke about development of a gene therapy for hemophilia and the creation of LUXTURNA™, a treatment for a rare form of blindness caused by a defective gene. Spark Therapeutics’ LUXTURNA is now the first gene therapy for an inherited disease to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the European Commission.

Sri Madabushi, PhD

The conference also featured a session on the promise of data-driven innovation that included Sri Madabushi, PhD, Business Development Director of Google AI Healthcare; and Eric Dishman, Director of the All of Us Research Program of the National Institutes of Health. All of Us is seeking to enroll more than 1 million Americans who will share their personal health data with researchers and clinicians who are advancing precision medicine.

Mr. Dishman said his personal experience is emblematic of the program’s goals. For 23 years, he battled a rare form of kidney cancer, enduring 57 rounds of chemotherapy and radiation. Seven years ago, when he was near death, he had his genome sequenced, and physicians used that data to identify a pancreatic cancer drug that eradicated his disease. “Here I was, a wealthy, college-educated man who knows CEOs and senators, and I barely got access to precision medicine—at the 11th hour. What about everyone else?”

Access to quality health care was the focus of the final session at SinaInnovations. Kelly J. Kelleher, MD, Distinguished Professor of Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Public Health at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, said that years ago, Nationwide became troubled by economic and health care disparities in a nearby neighborhood. “Some of our patients came from one of the areas most affected by violence, homelessness, drug addiction, and infant mortality, and I was offering a little bit of amoxicillin for ear infections,” Dr. Kelleher said. “This was unacceptable.” He said Nationwide has adopted a “neighborhood as patient” philosophy, working to incentivize doctors to keep patients healthy, support efforts to build affordable housing, and create job-training programs in the underserved community.

At the conclusion of SinaInnovations, conference leader Scott L. Friedman, MD, Dean for Therapeutic Discovery and Chief of the Division of Liver Diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine, summed up the event’s overarching message of innovation.

“We are a great medical school working to fulfill great ambitions,” he said. “This conference was intended to reflect upon the history of our 50 years as a medical school and project into our future.”

A panel on Caring for the Community Through the Lifespan with, from left: R. Shaun Morrison, MD; Nina A. Bickell, MD; Nathan Goldstein, MD; Elizabeth Howell, MD; John Steever, MD; David Blumenthal, MD; Kelly J. Kelleher, MD; and Angela Diaz, MD, PhD.

Mount Sinai hosted its third annual Health Hackathon, an exciting health care innovation competition that ran from Friday, October 19, through Sunday, October 21. Participants included students from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and 12 other academic institutions, plus professionals with a wide range of backgrounds, such as clinical care, business, basic science, engineering, and software development.

They formed 16 teams that worked together over a 48-hour period to create innovative, technology-based solutions to problems in the field of rare diseases.

The winning teams:

Eye Can Do Technology that allows an immobile person to use eye movements to interact with devices in a smart-home environment.

Mango Tango A smartphone app, called Demeter, that helps patients with metabolic disorders track their diet and assess and manage symptoms.

Walk Thru An ambulatory walker with a portable attachment that helps the user get through self-closing doors without letting go of the walker.

“It’s pretty incredible what people can accomplish when they work with like-minded and not like-minded colleagues to create new ventures,” said Janice L. Gabrilove, MD, the James F. Holland, MD Professor of Medicine and Oncological Sciences, and Director, Clinical and Translational Research Education Program, Icahn School of Medicine.

The Health Hackathon is funded by ConduITS, the Institutes for Translational Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine, with sponsorship from the software engineering company Persistent Systems. A diverse panel of judges chose three winning teams, which were each awarded a prize of $2,500. These teams, plus a fourth wild-card team, will be invited to participate in an Innovation Showcase sponsored by Mount Sinai Innovation Partners on February 14, 2019, where they will present their pitches to a panel of entrepreneurs.

Two publications from researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have been included in an annual listing of the most influential research publications.

The two publications were included in the annual Altmetric Top 100, which highlights research published in 2018 that has generated significant international online attention and discussion in forums including post-publication peer-review sites, public policy documents, the media, blogs, and social media platforms.

The two publications included in the list are:

• “Structure and Distribution of an Unrecognized Interstitium in Human Tissues,” which was published in March in Scientific Reports. It was ranked number 14 on the list.
• “Multiscale Analysis of Independent Alzheimer’s Cohorts Finds Disruption of Molecular, Genetic, and Clinical Networks by Human Herpesvirus,” which was published in June in Neuron. It was ranked number 74 on the list.

Altmetric, which is based in London, tracks and analyzes the online activity around scholarly literature. The firm collates what people are saying about published research outputs in scholarly and non-scholarly forums like the mainstream media, policy documents, social networks, and blogs to provide a more robust picture of the influence and reach of scholarly work.

Altmetric works with some of the biggest publishers, funders, and institutions around the world to deliver this data in an accessible and reliable format.