The Transformative Scholars Program in the Department of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital was established to support talented physician-scientists in taking on critical challenges facing health and health care today.

With the support of visionary philanthropists, the program provides the opportunity for outstanding young faculty to pursue innovative, high impact, interdisciplinary work.

By linking the individual support to the world-class scientific and clinical resources of Mass General, the program creates a stimulating and supportive environment that encourages new ways of thinking and transformative new insights.

This year, four faculty members received awards from the program. Read below to learn more about each recipient and their research.

Russell Goodman, MD, DPhil
Physician-Investigator, Division of Gastroenterology
Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Goodman’s research seeks to understand how changes in hepatic metabolism lead to different forms of liver disease, with a particular focus on alcohol-related liver disease (ALD).

ALD is becoming increasingly common. During the COVID-19 pandemic, more young patients are presenting with severe cases of ALD.

There are no effective therapies for these patients, who will eventually die without receiving a liver transplant.

“My hope is to identify new pathways underlying ALD that we can target for new therapeutic approaches.“

Annie Neilan, MD
Physician-Investigator, Medical Practice Evaluation Center
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Neilan received an award for her project examining the clinical impact and cost-effectiveness of new strategies for HIV prevention modalities for adolescents and young adults with HIV.

A medicine and pediatrics-trained adult infectious disease physician, Dr. Neilan’s research interests include using simulation modeling to inform policy-relevant care strategies for adolescents and young adults with HIV and at risk of HIV.

“I’m incredibly grateful to receive the Department of Medicine Transformative Scholars award; it will provide critical support to permit me to expand the scope of my current research in a new setting as well as incorporate emerging novel HIV prevention strategies into our simulation modeling work.”

Rod Rahimi, MD, PhD
Physician Investigator, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine
Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

As the lungs are exposed to a myriad of inhaled particulate matter, allergens, and pathogens, the immune system plays an essential role in protection from respiratory pathogens. However, inappropriate immune responses to harmless, inhaled antigens can lead to pulmonary diseases such as asthma.

The central focus of the Rahimi laboratory is to understand the rules governing T cell responses to inhaled antigens in the context of health and disease, with the goal of identifying new treatment targets and therapeutic strategies for allergic diseases such as asthma.

His team is particularly interested in understanding how and why T cells launch an immune response to harmless environmental allergens and how these allergen specific T cells persist in the airways, launching recurring responses to inhaled allergens and driving airway inflammation.

“The support from the Transformative Scholars Award allows our laboratory to take our research in a new direction, focusing on the role of T cell metabolism in driving allergic disease. It allows us the freedom to explore new avenues, which is incredibly helpful for a new principal investigator.”

Dr. Benjamin Bearnot, MD, MPH
Physician Investigator, Department of Medicine
Instructor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

As the U.S. wrestles with the opioid crisis, serious infections resulting from injection drug use have risen rapidly.

Care for people with opioid use disorder (OUD) and serious infections is complex and costly, and without treatment of their underlying substance use, the natural history of disease for these individuals is dismal.

Mind-body therapies are an appealing but untested strategy for augmenting pharmacologic treatment for this extremely high-risk group.

Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) is a novel mind-body therapy developed specifically for the treatment of individuals with OUD, pain, and distress.

With the Transformative Scholars Program Award, Dr. Bearnot and his research team will conduct a randomized controlled trial to see if adding MORE therapy to gold-standard inpatient addiction treatment helps to reduce addiction severity and pain, while improving distress tolerance and engagement in addiction care.

“This generous two-year research award will really help accelerate my transition from career development to independence as a junior faculty physician-investigator in the Division of General Internal Medicine,” says Dr. Bearnot.

“My mentor, Dr. Travis Baggett, was an inaugural TSP awardee in 2015. Watching his career flourish, I can see how the TSP award was an important catalyst for his future success, and I hope I can achieve something similar with this opportunity.”

About the Mass General Research Institute
Research at Massachusetts General Hospital is interwoven through more than 30 different departments, centers and institutes. Our research includes fundamental, lab-based science; clinical trials to test new drugs, devices and diagnostic tools; and community and population-based research to improve health outcomes across populations and eliminate disparities in care.
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