2025 First Look: Mass General Brigham Innovators Present the Next Wave of Breakthroughs

The 2025 World Medical Innovation Forum’s final day opened with First Look, a fast-paced session where 18 Harvard-affiliated Mass General Brigham innovators delivered eight-minute presentations on market-ready science with strong commercial potential.

Spanning therapeutics, devices, diagnostics, and AI, the presentations highlighted new approaches in cancer and autoimmune disease as well as advances in women’s health, pediatrics, and neuroscience. Designed to give investors, entrepreneurs, investigators, and donors an inside view of technologies on the path from lab to clinic, First Look is a Forum tradition that consistently showcases the breadth and strength of innovation across Mass General Brigham.

Congratulations to the 2025 First Look Award recipients:

• Jeannie Lee, MD, PhD, Phillip A. Sharp Chair, Department of Molecular Biology, for an epigenetic approach to reactivating the MECP2 gene in Rett Syndrome.
• Michael Talkowski, PhD, Director, Center for Genomic Medicine, for a noninvasive fetal sequencing platform that enables high-resolution prenatal testing without invasive procedures.

2025 First Look presentations included:

• A new target of granzyme K T cells to treat autoimmune diseases
• Using generative AI to simulate realistic clinical experiences for medical students around the world
• Noninvasive microscope to count and track white blood cells in vivo
• Closed-loop cell therapy to treat Type 1 Diabetes
• Differentiated approach to restore vaginal health in those with vaginal dysbiosis
• Simple, non-disruptive oxygen sensors
• Synthetic CAR T cell therapy for cancer treatment
• Gene-specific method of treating Rett Syndrome
• Neural stem cell therapy to treat diseases of the Enteric Nervous System
• Precision long-term therapies for vascular disease in children
• AI digital platform brain care score for preemptive, individualized healthcare
• New drug discovery for the blood/brain barrier
• AI interface to make predictive health advice based on biological age of face
• Clinical trial recording using AI
• Monoclonal antibody resistant checkpoint inhibitors
• Precision coagulation profiling
• Noninvasive prenatal genome sequencing
• Work in the “Dark Genome” for immunity in cancer

Watch all 2025 First Look Sessions.