Enterprise Innovation brings internal and external collaboration opportunities to our faculty and trainees. These programs provide extra funding and opportunities to work with industry to advance faculty/trainees' translational research projects.
Please contact Dr. James Bellush at james.bellush@cornell.edu if you have any questions or need guidance on your application.
1. AIM-HI: BRACE Award Venture Competition
- Eligibility: The BRACE (Bridging Research from Academic to Cancer Entrepreneurship) award provides investment funding to early stage oncology start-ups to accelerate innovative therapeutics, diagnostics, and cancer prevention products into the clinic.
- Submission Details: AIM-HI application portal
- Award Details: $600,000 investment funding (subject to due diligence and negotiation) from Asian Fund for Cancer Research and co-investors to fund proof of concept studies which validate novel cancer technologies and accelerate path to the clinic
- Submission Deadline: March 15, 2025 (11:55 PM EST)
2. AIM-HI: Womens Venture Competition
- Eligibility: Women biotech entrepreneurs seeking pre-seed, seed, and Series A investments in new companies developing next-generation oncology therapeutics, diagnostics, and prevention technologies.
- Submission Details: AIM-HI application portal
- Award Details: Up to $1M equity investment from AIM-HI and co-investors, subject to due diligence. Additionally, winners will receive mentorship and access to AIM-HI investor / advisory network.
- Submission Deadline: March 15, 2025 (11:55 PM EST)
3. Critical Path Institute: Translational Therapeutics Accelerator (TRxA) BRIDGe Awards
- Eligibility: Translational science faculty seeking funding and strategic guidance to advance their small molecule, protein-based, or gene-based therapeutic candidate towards the clinic.
- Therapeutic Areas: Brain health, pediatric disease, rare and orphan disease
- Modalities: Small molecules, protein-based therapeutics (peptides, antibodies, ADCs), and gene-based therapies (AAV gene therapy, RNA based therapy)
- Development Stage Funding Levels:
a) Small molecule or protein based therapy
- Stage 1: Early lead compound to late lead series ($250,000 x 1 year)
- Stage 2: Late lead series to selection of clinical candidate ($500,000 x 1 year)
- Stage 3: Candidate selection through IND enabling studies ($1M x 1 year)
b) Gene-based therapy: $250,000 x 1 year
- Submission Details: Guidance document for applicants, including modality specific entry criteria. Submit pre-proposal through the grant portal.
- Award Details: Scientific review of pre-proposals will evaluate:
- Unmet medical need
- Novelty of target or mechanism
- Commercial viability
- Target Validation / Rationale
- Research Plan
- Probability of Success
- Budget Justification
- Submission Deadline: Wednesday, March 19, 2025 (11:59 PM EST)
4. Gates Foundation: Innovations for Gram-Negative Antibiotic Discovery
- Eligibility: New initiative between Novo Nordisk Foundation, Wellcome, and Gates Foundation focused on launching a Gram-Negative Antibiotic Discovery Innovator (Gr-ADI). Funding will support the discovery of safe, simple first-line broad spectrum antibiotics with activity against Enterobacteriaceae, with a common focus point on Klebsiella spp.
- Competitive proposals will address one of the following:
- Development of genome-scale tools to identify new chemical starting points and drug target vulnerability
- Innovative technologies to select targets and chemical leads with high bar to resistance
- Chemistry underlying the penetration of compounds to different bacterial cell compartments and discovery platform for rapid compound testing
- Novel and coordinated approaches to identify new chemical leads for clinically or in vivo validated drug targets
- Submission Details: Contact James Bellush (james.bellush@cornell.edu) regarding further application information.
- First phase requires submitting LOI and scientific proposal <5 pgs.
- Register for informational webinar here if interested.
- Award Details: Three year funding period with maximum budget of $5M.
Submission Deadline: March 25, 2025 by 11:00 am PST