CIMIT and Johnson & Johnson Announce Innovation Research Award for Young Clinicians.

BOSTON -- Through a $250,000 gift from Johnson & Johnson to CIMIT, a Young Clinician Research Award Program is being established to encourage physicians, new in their careers, to create novel life-saving medical devices and technologies. An outstanding physician will be selected from each of the major Harvard teaching hospitals that are members of the CIMIT consortium - Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Children's Hospital Boston. It is anticipated that with this award, physicians will recognize the opportunity to find solutions to challenges in fields such as tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, minimally invasive surgery, renal disease, and biomaterials.

The award program reflects the CIMIT mission "to bring together science and technology to improve patient care," and the fundamental objective of Johnson & Johnson "to provide scientific quality products and services to help heal, cure disease and improve the quality of life."

Johnson & Johnson Fosters Innovation

The award is being given through Johnson & Johnson's Corporate Office of Science & Technology (COSAT). Ted Torphy, Corporate Vice-President for Science and Technology and head of COSAT noted: "We believe that during the early phases of their career, physicians are particularly interested in finding new techniques and procedures that will improve the care of their patients. Without assistance, many of these ideas never even get written down. But if these young doctors have the opportunity to convert their good ideas into working models and prototypes, and to test them out in the laboratory, they will have a much better chance of making a major contribution to medicine."

CIMIT Innovation

John A. Parrish, MD, director of CIMIT, expressed his appreciation for this generous gift. "Doctors working directly with patients every day to solve their medical problems have the best perspective on what is needed," he said. "It is their ideas that we want to capture, nurture, and help move through barriers to innovation. Our core team of experts in business, law, intellectual property protection and product development, help young investigators rapidly move ideas from bench to bedside. The J&J - CIMIT Young Clinician Research Award Program will provide the means to convert some of their best ideas into new tools and techniques. We are very appreciative that J&J is giving creative, caring physicians this opportunity to excel."

Collaborative Teams

Founded in 1997 as the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology, CIMIT is a non-profit consortium of the Harvard teaching hospitals, MIT and the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory. The CIMIT Consortium (www.cimit.org) was established to build collaborations between the clinical community and the engineering and science centers working to improve patient care through the development of innovative medical devices and technologies. Each year CIMIT funds collaborative programs including medical simulation, tissue engineering, minimally invasive surgery, image guided therapies, cardiovascular disease and trauma and casualty care. CIMIT also works closely with the Department of Defense to improve the medical treatment of injured soldiers.

The Awards Program

According to Donald Baim, MD, of Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Chair of the CIMIT Awards Program: "CIMIT will administer the awards program and use its full peer review process to competitively evaluate proposals from physicians applying for one of the Young Clinician Research Awards."

He added: "Recipients will be selected on the basis of the scientific merit, the collaborative effort, and the potential for patient impact of their proposals. Johnson & Johnson Corporation will not participate in the selection process and will not retain any rights to intellectual property created as a result of the awards."

About Johnson & Johnson

Johnson & Johnson, through its operating companies, is the world's most comprehensive and broad based manufacture of health care products, as well as a provider of related products and services for the consumer, pharmaceutical and medical device and diagnostic markets. The more than 200 Johnson & Johnson operating companies employ approximately 113,800 men and women in 57 countries and sell products throughout the world.

COSAT-CIMIT Alliance and Award

The roles of COSAT and CIMIT are similar within their respective organizations. COSAT was formed within J&J in 1978 to be a catalyst for collaboration and innovation both within the vast J&J family of companies, and with external partners in Academia. While COSAT and CIMIT have collaborated in the past, this award represents a new chapter of closer interaction between them with the shared objective of improving healthcare outcomes by fostering innovation and translational research.

Recipients of the J&J - CIMIT Young Clinician Research Award will be announced in March 2006.