Mass. researchers score grants for innovative projects

Here are the winners, their institutions, and their projects.

Pioneer ($2.5 million over 5 years):

Leona D. Samson, MIT: developing novel, high-throughput approaches to measure the ability of cells from different people to resist the toxic effects of a wide variety of DNA-damaging agents present in the environment and currently in clinical use

New Innovators ($1.5 million over five years):

Dr. Mark W. Albers, Massachusetts General Hospital: The olfactory neural circuit as a systems level model of neurodegenerative diseases

Fernando Camargo, Children’s Hospital Boston: Analysis of stem cell dynamics and differentiation by cellular barcoding

Dr. Ted Cohen, Brigham and Women's Hospital: Prevalence, risk factors and consequences of complex M. tuberculosis infections

Gabriel Kreiman, Children’s: Towards the neuronal correlates of visual awareness

Dr. J. Rodrigo Mora, Mass. General/Harvard Medical School: Reassessing the physiological role of gut-specific lymphocyte homing: Implications for autoimmunity and tolerance

Sunitha Nagrath, Mass. General/Harvard Medical: Engineering sensitive microfluidic multiplex technology for isolating circulating endothelial progenitor and tumor cells to study angiogenesis and metastasis in cancer development and progression

John S. Pezaris, Mass. General: Machine brain interface

Patrick L. Purdon, Mass. General/Harvard Medical: A neural systems approach to monitoring and drug delivery for general anesthesia

Leon Reijmers, Tufts University School of Medicine: Molecular analysis of functional neural circuits

John L. Rinn, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center/Broad Institute: RNA and chromatin formation: From discovery to mechanism

Dr. Pardis Christine Sabeti, Harvard University: Host and pathogen evolution in Lassa fever

Magali Saint-Geniez, Schepens Eye Research Institute/Harvard Medical: Bioengineering of Bruch's membrane for the treatment of age-related macular degeneration

Transformative R01 Program winners (up to $25 million over five years):

Frederick M. Ausubel, Mass. General/Harvard Medical: Identifying novel anti-infectives by high through-put screening in whole animals

Sylvie Breton, Harvard Medical/Mass. General: 3-Dimensional modeling of basal cell function in pseudostratified epithelia

Michael P. Czech, University of Massachusetts Medical School: Oral delivery vehicles for RNAi therapies

Gaudenz Danuser, Harvard Medical School, and Klaus M. Hahn, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill: Quantitative imaging of signaling networks

Linda G. Griffith, MIT: Perfused 3D tissue surrogates for complex cell-cell communication systems

Ru-Rong Ji and Charles N. Serhan, Brigham & Women’s/Harvard Medical: Resolvins, protectins, and chronic pain resolution

Kim Lewis, Northeastern University: Super-persistent cells and the paradox of untreatable infections

Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia, MIT, and Charles M. Rice, Rockefeller University: Modeling human hepatotropic infections in complex tissue organoids

Bela Suki, Boston University: Regulatory roles of variable mechanical stimuli in cell function

Dr. Loren D. Walensky, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute: A lexicon of stapled peptide helices engineered to capture the protein interactome

Xiaoliang S. Xie, Harvard: Imaging the invisible with no labels: A major opportunity in biology and medicine