Joseph Wu Receives CERSI Grant

Joseph Wu, MD, PhD, director of the Stanford Cardiovascular Institute and the Simon H. Stertzer, MD, Professor of Medicine, was awarded an $850,000 grant from the UCSF-Stanford Center of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation (CERSI) to study clinical drug development for rare diseases.

As part of a U.S. Food & Drug Administration initiative, CERSIs are government collaborations with academic institutions that “advance regulatory science through innovative research, training and scientific exchanges.”

Wu’s research is on “Assessing the Potential for Patient-Specific and Genome Edited Induced Pluripotent Cell-Based Models to Streamline Clinical Drug Development for Rare Diseases.” At Stanford, his lab is dedicated to exploring biological mechanisms of patient-specific and disease-specific induced pluripotent stem cells. The aim is to improve understanding of cardiovascular diseases, accelerate drug discovery, implement precision medicine and devise new clinical trial concepts.

This recognition is the most recent in Wu’s extensive list of awards and accolades, which includes the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s New Innovator Award, NIH Roadmap Transformative Award, American Heart Association (AHA) Innovative Research Award, Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) given by President Obama and more.