Anne Schaefer, MD, PhD, Inventor of the Year

Individuals and teams from the Mount Sinai Health System were honored for significant advances in research, technology, medicine, and health care at the fourth annual Mount Sinai Innovation Awards ceremony, which was held Monday, October 22, in conjunction with the SinaInnovations conference.

Anne Schaefer, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Neuroscience, and Psychiatry, at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and a
Seaver Fellow at The Friedman Brain Institute, received the Inventor of the Year Award for her work in micro-RNA, which heralds a potential cure for intractable seizures in certain forms of epilepsy, including Dravet syndrome, a catastrophic childhood disease.

Julio A. Aguirre-Ghiso, PhD, left, recipient of the Deal of the Year Award, with Scott L. Friedman, MD, Dean for Therapeutic Discovery, and leader of the SinaInnovations conference.

Julio A. Aguirre-Ghiso, PhD, Professor, Medicine (Hematology and Medical Oncology), Otolaryngology, and Oncological Sciences, received the Deal of the Year Award for his research into the underlying causes of metastatic disease and relapse that is the basis for a new startup company in New York City.

Drew Kiraly, MD, PhD, and James Young, MD, PhD, received the Faculty Idea Prize for analyzing more than 1,000 metabolites from the serum of patients undergoing active monitoring for epileptic seizure activity. The analyses of Dr. Kiraly, Assistant Professor, Neuroscience, and Psychiatry, and Dr. Young, an Instructor in Neurosurgery and Neurology, will serve as the first step in developing clinically applicable serum biomarkers to help refine and target treatment strategies for epilepsy.

A group of 22 innovators received the 4D Technology Development Program Award for five projects that efficiently move new technologies through a process of discovery, design, development, and delivery:

• Identification of biomarkers for preemptive diagnosis of ocular graft vs. host disease (oGVHD) in patients with hematopoietic cellular transplantation (HCT): Penny A. Asbell, MD; Neeta S. Roy, PhD; James L. Ferrara, MD, DSc; John E. Levine, MD; Eric Kuklinski, BS; and Yi Wei, PhD.

• Automation of radiographic measurements for surgical planning using artificial intelligence: Samuel K. Cho, MD; Varun Arvind, BS; Deepak Kaji, BA; Jun S. Kim, MD; Eric K. Oermann, MD; and Jonathan E. Robinson, MD.

• Development of an epigenetic treatment for Prader-Willi syndrome: Jian Jin, PhD; Yong-Hui Jiang, MD, PhD; and Yan Xiong, PhD.

• Creation of an eye-tracking algorithm for autism: Pilar Trelles, MD; Robert Gilman, MD; Alexander Kolevzon, MD; and Mirko Zimic, PhD.

• Knowledge-based automated radiotherapy planning via deep learning: Yading Yuan, PhD; Yeh-Chi Lo, PhD; and Tzu-Chi Tseng, MS.

The Dean’s Healthcare System Team Science Award, which acknowledges the importance of interdisciplinary teams in translational research, went to 15 members of the DEFINE-FMD Team. The group initiated a large, functional omics study of the genetic and molecular basis of fibromuscular dysplasia (FMD), a disease that predominately affects women and results in stroke and myocardial infarction. The study has enabled the team to identify several disease-causing candidates and begin developing a blood-based diagnostic test. The winners were Jason Kovacic, MD, PhD; Jeffrey W. Olin, DO; Antonio F. Di Narzo, PhD; Valentina d’Escamard,
PhD; Daniella Kadian-Dodov, MD; Haoxiang Cheng, PhD; Annette King, RN, ANP; Bhargravi Vonguru, MS; Emir Bander, MD; Allison Thomas, MS; Rihab Bouchareb, PhD; Sander Florman, MD; Johan LM Björkegren, MD, PhD; Manuel Mayr, MD, PhD; and Ke Hao, PhD.

Four individuals received Trainee Innovation Idea Awards, which highlight research ideas from Mount Sinai trainees that could potentially be translated into a marketable product:

• MD student Aly Valliani: Virtual Contrast

• PhD student Billie Bian: MediTrack

• Postdoctoral fellow Sangeetha Vadakke- Madathil, PhD: Placental stem cells for regeneration of an injured heart

• House staff physician Jorge Andrade Romo, MD: Structural vs. functional foveal avascular zone (FAZ) parameters compared at different stages of diabetic retinopathy.