Through a collaborative approach, Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) and Rice University aim to advance health-related research fostering multidisciplinary partnerships between faculty from both institutions to develop groundbreaking health solutions for the benefit of humanity with global societal impact.
Joint Funding Opportunities
Rice University, through the ENRICH Office, and BCM's Department of Surgery INSTINCT Program award seed funding to foster innovation and strengthen the collaborative efforts between both institutions, with a focus on advancing surgical research and education. The awarded projects should lead to self-sustaining, nationally competitive research programs that will address critically important problems related to surgery.
Call for proposals will be announced in April, 2025.
Partnerships
SynthX Center and Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center
In 2022, the Rice's SynthX Center joined forces with Baylor College of Medicine’s (BCM) Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center. This collaboration aims to explore health problems and develop new treatments through initiatives such as workshops, collaborative meetings, retreats, symposiums. Additionally, to foster innovative partnerships between synthetic chemists and clinical scientists in cancer research, SynthX Center and the Duncan Cancer Center announced a call for seed grants and awarded three proposals.
The Rice-BCM collaboration has expedited the integration of advances in medicinal chemistry, chemical biology, and machine learning into clinical practices. In December 2024, researchers at Rice and BCM were awarded with a $2.3 million grant from the Department of Defense’s Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs to develop a novel antibody therapy for treating bone metastases in estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer. The goal is to improve treatment for bone metastases, which affect up to 40% of ER+ breast cancer survivors.