February 2, 2018
CBC Accelerator Network (CBCAN) meeting: Accelerator Award proposals round one, part 1
CBCAN meeting, Prentice Women Hospital, Chicago, February 1, 2018.Jim Audia, CBC Executive Director (center), Nancy Tyrrell, CBC Associate Director, Translational Activities, and the CBC Accelerator Award LOI presenters (from the left): Brian Layden (UIC), Karl Scheidt (NU), Alexander Stegh (NU) and Arnon Lavie (UIC).
Live Presentation of proposals at CBCAN is an integral component of CBC’s newest award program, the Accelerator Award, which is in the midst of its first round. The program has drawn great interest from the community, with 32 Letters of Intent (LOIs) submitted covering a broad range of translational efforts toward therapeutics and/or their associated diagnostics or biomarkers.
From the initial 32 submissions, nine promising proposals were advanced to the live CBCAN presentation stage of the process after initial triage review by the Accelerator Review Board (ARB). The four LOIs presented at the February 1 CBCAN came from Arnon Lavie (UIC), Alexander Stegh (NU), Brian Layden (UIC) and Karl Scheidt (NU), and described novel approaches toward therapeutics for a range of cancer types as well as type 2 diabetes. Five additional proposals will be presented at a second CBCAN event on February 8.
Jim Audia, CBC Executive Director, and Nancy Tyrrell, CBC Associate Director for Translational Activities, moderated the February 1 event, which was broadly attended by members of the Chicago biomedical community.
The format of the meeting required a clear and concise summary of the proposed opportunity, addressing both the unmet medical need and commercial implications, key supportive data and competitive landscape. With only 8 minutes for presentation followed by 10 minutes of Q&A, there is little time to be wasted and the presentations need to be finely tuned to hit the mark. It was great to see the high level of engagement from the community and questions from the audience helped to further refine the proposed research. The audience was also asked to provide written feedback which will be collated and provided to the investigators for consideration in their full proposal.
Following the live pitch session, the evening concluded with lots of networking and follow-up in a casual and social setting. Can’t wait till next week for another round.
Photos by Brian Kay, CBC
SEE ALSO:
▸ CBCAN February 1, 2018 program