Case Study: National Institute of Mental Health achieves breakthroughs in single-cell tracking innovation with Wazoku

National Institute of Mental Health - Customer Case Study

InnoCentive partnered with the National Institutes of Health to run the Follow that Cell Challenge (2014–2017), a two‑phase competition that awarded nearly $500,000 to stimulate non‑academic innovators to develop tools for predicting single‑cell behavior and function over time. The goal was to move beyond snapshot measurements toward non‑destructive, time‑resolved methods that reveal how individual cells transition between healthy and diseased states and respond to treatments.

Phase 1 solicited theoretical approaches and produced 16 finalists; Phase 2 required proof‑of‑concept demonstrations and produced two winners: Nader Pourmand (UC Santa Cruz) won $300,000 for a nanopipette plus “nanogenomics” approach enabling repeated, minimally invasive intracellular sampling, and Paul Blainey’s team (Broad Institute) won $100,000 for a molecular “self‑reporting” technique that reads intracellular signals via secretion pathways. Both solutions delivered working demonstrations with immediate laboratory impact and strong potential to improve early disease detection, monitor treatment response, and accelerate related innovations.

National Institute of Mental Health

James Anderson

Director