Seed money from a federally funded project is helping four Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation scientists advance their studies one step closer to marketable disease treatments.
The OMRF researchers received one-year grants from OKBioStart, a program funded by the U.S. Economic Development Administration and administered by the University of Oklahoma Health Campus. The grants range from $35,000 to $75,000.
“The idea behind OKBioStart is to move ideas closer to commercialization by paying for things that traditional grants don’t cover,” said Hemangi Pakala, Ph.D., who leads OMRF’s technology commercialization efforts.
In the most recent funding round, OMRF’s Courtney Griffin, Ph.D., and Matlock Jeffries, M.D., received grants. Griffin aims to develop and new therapy to treat diabetic retinopathy, while Jeffries is working toward a cartilage-regeneration injection for people with osteoarthritis.
For Griffin, the grant covers experiments that compare her proposed therapy to another drug already on the market. “These are required steps before we can ask the FDA for permission to test our drug in human clinical trials,” she said.
OKBioStart traces its origins to a 2022 meeting held at OMRF to pitch Oklahoma City’s candidacy for federal biotech investment. Soon after, the EDA awarded a $35 million “Build Back Better” grant to the Oklahoma Biotech Innovation Cluster, the city’s public-private partnership aimed at drug discovery and manufacturing. Of that $35, million, $7 million was set aside for research.
Jeffries said the resulting grant program bridges what scientists call the “valley of death,” advancing discoveries that show effectiveness in preliminary studies but are not yet developed enough to receive private-sector investment.
“For my lab, this funding pays for studies that ensure our product is safe,” Jeffries said. “It also enables us to study various dosages to determine the lowest dose that is still effective in reducing arthritis pain and structural damage.”
The other OMRF scientists who have received OKBioStart funding are:
- Chi Fung Lee, Ph.D, who hopes to create an inhibitor to treat heart disease resulting from diabetes; and
- Sathish Srinivasan, Ph.D., who is collaborating with an OU scientist to design a treatment for degenerative heart valve disease.
