The University of Michigan has announced a $20 million gift from the Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation in support of innovative research at Michigan Medicine.

The gift will establish the Maxine and Stuart Frankel Innovation Initiative in support of U-M faculty-led research projects with the potential for rapid clinical application. To be administered by Fast Forward Medical Innovation, a unit of the U-M Medical School Office of Research, the effort will build on best practices developed by programs at U-M and other top institutions as well as the university's extensive biomedical research enterprise.

U-M alumni Maxine and Stuart Frankel previously supported the translational research program of H. David Humes, MD, and his team, who have developed innovative devices to treat inflammatory conditions such as sepsis and systemic infections. The Frankels' gift will provide additional support to Humes, enabling him and his team to develop and evaluate miniaturized devices to treat neonates and infants. The gift was inspired by the groundbreaking work of Robert Bartlett, who is known as the father of ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) and is currently working with several U-M collaborators to develop other life-support technologies.

"We hope this gift will create an environment that will support collaboration among professionals," said Stuart Frankel, president of the Stuart Frankel Development Company. "We encourage doctors, researchers, people from engineering and other areas to work together in hopes of achieving monumental, life-saving research. We want the best minds from the University of Michigan and around the world to collaborate on the most innovative research and take scientific discovery to a new level."

(Photo credit: University of Michigan)