Funded Research
Transformative Computational Biology Grants
In March 2024, five research teams were selected to receive funding in the first cycle of the Biswas Family Foundation’s Transformative Computational Biology Grant Program. $15 million of funding was awarded to research using computational tools across a range of focus areas, including AI for genomic medicine, diagnosis of cardiovascular disease, precision oncology therapies, enhancement of clinical datasets, and drug repurposing systems.
2024 Grant Recipients
(listed in alphabetical order)
AI for Genomic Medicine: Circuitry, Treatment, Personalization
Manolis Kellis, PhD, Professor of Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Co-Investigators: Brad Pentelute, PhD and Marinka Zitnik, PhD
This project aims to support the integration of single-cell spatial sequencing with rapid machine learning approaches to generate a shortlist of target genes for precision therapeutics in cancer, neuroscience, and metabolic disorders. The high-throughput discovery loop will help advance biomarker selection, de novo drug synthesis, and drug repurposing, which is essential for more effective therapeutics.
A Chatbot Assistant for Genetic Diagnosis and Interpretation of Common and Rare Cardiovascular Diseases
Anshul Kundaje, PhD, Associate Professor of Genetics and Computer Science, Stanford University
Co-Investigator: Jesse Engreitz, PhD
This project aims to accelerate the diagnosis of patients with cardiovascular diseases by developing a chatbot interfaced with genomic knowledge graphs. In the clinical diagnostic workflow, the impact of genomic mutations is unknown in many cardiovascular diseases, so genomic knowledge graphs populated by machine learning models trained on multiple types of data will improve the diagnostic process.
Biswas Center for Transformative Computational Cancer Biology
Katherine Pollard, PhD, Director of Data Science & Biotechnology, Gladstone Institutes
Co-Investigators: Alex Marson, MD, PhD, Barbara Engelhardt, PhD, Catherine Tcheandjieu Gueliatcha, DVM, PhD, Christina Theodoris, MD, PhD, Karin Pelka, PhD, Ryan Corces, PhD, Seth Shipman, PhD, and Vijay Ramani, PhD
This project aims to support the development of personalized diagnosis and treatment for colorectal and skin cancers. Machine learning models will be trained to predict how a patient’s genetic mutation can alter tumor cell biology to better understand the diverse pathways that drive cancer, and to evaluate the effectiveness of candidate immunotherapies for more personalized treatments.
The MAIDA Initiative: Democratizing Global Medical Imaging Data Sharing for Safer and Fairer AI
Pranav Rajpurkar, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School
This project aims to collect medical imaging data from around the globe to facilitate the use of AI to analyze images and improve diagnosis and treatment. The focus is on collecting chest X-rays and chest CT images for a variety of clinical settings. Developing an open data repository of medical images that is representative of diverse patient populations will help the deployment of AI tools that are reliable, equitable, and inclusive.
CURE-Bench: Universal Benchmark for All-Disease Drug Repurposing
Marinka Zitnik, PhD, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School
This project aims to build CURE-Bench, a comprehensive all-disease benchmark for evaluating computational drug repurposing systems. An international competition will help establish common tasks and datasets to promote the development, evaluation, and widespread use of AI models to identify clinically-relevant drug hits. The goal is to develop a hub of pre-trained AI models and an accompanying evaluation framework to benchmark models across diseases and datasets.
Research Gifts
Arc Institute
Palo Alto, California
As part of the $15 million in funding announced in March 2024, the Foundation provided a gift to the Arc Institute to enhance AI and computational biology research.
Arc Institute is a nonprofit research organization whose mission is to accelerate scientific progress and understand the root causes of complex diseases. By doing this, they aim to improve human health by narrowing the gap between discoveries and impact on patients.
Philanthropy can fast-track research and medical breakthroughs
We’ve partnered with the Milken Institute to create a guide to map out those opportunities and highlight the transformative impact we can make on global health.