The strategic grants are part of the Therapeutics Accelerator’s Innovation Curation Program, which aims to propel projects from conceptualization in the lab to becoming investment-ready, commercially viable therapeutic solutions.
Eshelman Innovation set the stage during last spring’s summit, “Shaping the Future of Autoimmune Therapies: Harnessing Artificial Intelligence Innovation,” by convening researchers, clinicians, industry partners, patient advocates, policymakers, funders and others for lively panel discussions. Topics included using artificial intelligence and machine learning to accelerate drug development for novel autoimmunity therapy targets, emerging treatment paradigms for autoimmune disorders and ways to improve patient outcomes.
Eshelman Innovation followed up with a request for proposals and, after a thorough review by a committee that included subject matter experts from the summit, selected Ainslie and Sheikh to receive research funding and other support.
The institute is planning a second autoimmune summit focused on cell therapies for spring of 2026.
Cutting-edge innovation
Ainslie’s lab is using a patented microparticle to selectively target disease-fighting white blood cells called B cells and convert them into protective regulatory cells. Doing so could offer precise treatment for diseases like multiple sclerosis while avoiding the side effects of current therapies. She is collaborating on the project with Eric Bachelder, associate professor in the Eshelman School of Pharmacy.
“This funding is transformative for our team. It allows us to advance a novel inverse vaccine approach that retrains the immune system instead of suppressing it, offering the possibility of safer, more effective therapies for patients living with devastating autoimmune diseases,” Ainslie says. “With this support, we can take critical steps toward translating our technology into real treatments that have the potential to dramatically improve patients’ quality of life.”
Sheikh is taking a different approach, targeting what could be a previously unidentified protein that enhances intestinal inflammation.
“Normally, special immune cells called ‘killer T cells’ protect us by destroying harmful or infected cells. In inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), this system goes out of balance, and instead of protecting, these cells cause ongoing damage and inflammation in the gut,” Sheikh says. “Our project is focused on a protein called CADM1, which is found at higher levels in the immune cells of people with IBD. By creating a new antibody to block CADM1, and testing it in patient-derived models, we hope to develop a new treatment for Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.”
A summit in 2024 aimed the Innovation Curation Program at radiopharmaceuticals, a promising new class of diagnostic and therapeutic tools that use radioisotopes to bind with biological molecules for targeting specific human tissues or cells. That effort also led to strategic grants by Eshelman Innovation to two Carolina research teams.
“The goal of this curation model is to engage stakeholders early to find out the needs and opportunities in a particular field,” said Pati. “The science is hard enough. If we can be strategic about all the other pieces, including what the market wants, we’ll have a much better chance of success.”
Eshelman Innovation is part of the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, the country’s number one pharmacy school.
