Dr. Dimitrios Iliopoulos
Co-founder & CEO
Athos Therapeutics
Hood Child Health Research Award Winner, 2011
Project: Identification of Novel Molecular Circuits in Pediatric Ulcerative Colitis
Spotlight: Dr. Dimitrios Iliopoulos
What happens when a bold scientific idea meets exactly the right support at exactly the right moment?
For Dr. Dimitrios Iliopoulos, it set off a chain reaction that reached all the way to the clinic. Backed by a Hood award early in his career, Dr. Iliopoulos pursued what was then a controversial systems biology approach to unraveling pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Disease. That investment paid off. He discovered microRNA-124 as a key disease driver, which has since been validated in Phase 2 and Phase 3 clinical trials, and the therapeutic concept he pioneered is now reaching real patients.
Today, Dr. Iliopoulos is the co-founder and CEO of Athos Therapeutics, a biotech company harnessing AI to develop next-generation treatments for autoimmune diseases that affect children and adults alike. In this spotlight, he reflects on the lessons that shaped his career, the power of letting data lead the way, and what he would tell every early-career investigator who’s ever been told their idea is too risky to pursue.
Enjoy our conversation with Dr. Dimitrios Iliopoulos!
Hood: Looking back, how did your Hood award fit into your career at that moment?
Dr. Iliopoulos: At that time, I was studying the role of different pro-inflammatory signaling pathways and their role in pediatric Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD) pathogenesis. However, during the last decade, there was an increase in the incidence rates of both ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s Disease in children and specifically teenagers. Several hypothesis and clinical data suggested the several factors (genetics, dietary and environmental changes) were related with the increased IBD disease incidence.
The support from the Hood Foundation’s Child Health Research Award allowed my research team to evaluate IBD pathogenesis using a systems biology approach. The Hood Foundation supported this innovative concept, aiming to integrate cellular and human data in order to potentially identify novel drivers of pediatric IBD pathogenesis. It included integration of one of the first high throughput small RNA screening analysis in human colonic epithelial cells and small RNA IBD patient molecular profiling data, which resulted in the identification of a novel molecular circuit, where a small RNA molecule, called microRNA-124 (miR-124) was found as a disease driver. The Hood award helped me to identify the mechanism of action of miR-124 and importantly show that miR-124 activation could have therapeutic potential in IBD patients, a concept that has been verified in human clinical trials during the last few years.
Hood: In what ways did the Hood grant influence your research direction or professional trajectory over time?
Dr. Iliopoulos: The Hood Foundation significantly influenced my professional career and direction related to studying human complex and multi-factorial diseases and developing new therapeutics using a systems biology approach.
The project funded by the Hood grant revealed the importance and power of integrating cellular and human data in order to identify in an unbiased way drug gene targets. The main concept for many decades was to identify and evaluate potential novel drug/gene targets in a hypothesis-driven approach. Performing an unbiased high throughput analysis allowed the evaluation of all genes (in this specific case all small RNAs) at the same time and integration of the cellular screening results with human patient clinical and molecular data in order to directly evaluate the human relevance of these in vitro findings. These concepts have shaped my scientific thinking and career and were the precursor of performing this integrative clinical and molecular data analysis using artificial intelligence and machine learning methods, which did not exist fifteen years ago.
To be able to perform this kind of integrative analysis it was important to perform a multi-institutional collaboration framework between basic, translational and clinical research teams at Harvard and UCLA.
Furthermore, it revealed the potential importance of epigenetics as regulators and potential therapeutic targets for pediatric complex and multi-factorial diseases, where genetics are not the “clear” drivers of disease pathogenesis.
Hood: What impact of the Hood award are you most proud of today?
Dr. Iliopoulos: I am proud that the Hood award allowed my team to identify and publish for the first time the role and therapeutic potential of microRNA-124 activation in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases and currently a small molecule activating microRNA-124 has validated the mechanism of action that we identified at that time and most importantly phase 2 and phase 3 clinical trials showed the excellent safety profile and therapeutic effects in IBD patients. It is the best pleasure and dream for a scientist to discover a new gene in a human disease and see this initial concept and results to be translated into a new effective therapy in patients, with the potential to improve children’s health.
Hood: Can you share an example of how Hood’s support helped open doors—connections, confidence, credibility, or opportunity?
Dr. Iliopoulos: As described above, the Hood award allowed me to study a human complex and multi-factorial disease using a systems biology approach. At that time, this concept was not so popular and well accepted like it is today. Having the funding and support of the Hood foundation my team was able to perform this pivotal study, which had a great impact on the IBD scientific community, showing the value of integrating cellular, animal and human clinical and molecular data. The Hood award was the precursor of my scientific and entrepreneurial career, allowing me to get additional funding and awards, including an RO1 NIH grant studying the role of microRNAs in IBD pathogenesis.
Most importantly, this novel way of thinking created a new career opportunity for myself that was further supported and funded by the Eli & Edythe Broad Foundation, allowing me to establish the UCLA Center for Systems Biomedicine, one of the first centers combining robotic, technological and multi-disciplinary approaches to study human inflammatory diseases.
Hood: How has your work evolved since receiving the Hood award?
Dr. Iliopoulos: Today, I am still following the concept of unbiased new drug target identification based on cellular, animal and human data integrative analysis. Since receiving the Hood award, my motto is “let the data identify the molecular drivers and therapeutic targets of human complex diseases”. Of course, this naturally led me to start using AI and evaluating different machine learning approaches aiming to integrate clinical and multi-omic patient datasets. Currently, in Athos Therapeutics, a biotech company that I co-founded and lead as its CEO, we follow this strategy and approach to identify and develop novel therapeutics for different autoimmune diseases, including ulcerative colitis, atopic dermatitis and lupus. Using this approach, we have developed an AI-designed, first-in-class small molecule (ATH-063) that is highly specific on activating FoxP3+ T-regulatory cells, having therapeutic potential in ulcerative colitis, lupus and type 1 diabetes, diseases found in children and teenagers.
Hood: What advice would you give to current Hood awardees or early-career investigators?
Dr. Iliopoulos: The advice that I will give to current Hood awardees is to continue performing innovative research, aiming to answer important biological and mechanistic questions related to children’s health. The project that the Hood Foundation funded me, was considered very risky at that time and there was minimal chance that would be funded by NIH. Systems biology approaches, using RNA molecules as potential therapeutics were not considered well accepted ideas at that time, however the Hood award allowed to evaluate and perform these studies. It is important for current Hood awardees to build on their project and expand its aims in order to build a successful scientific research program and career.
Hood: How do you see the role of mentorship, collaboration, or community in advancing pediatric health?
Dr. Iliopoulos: It is important to have a collaborative spirit if we want to advance pediatric health and expedite the development of novel therapies for pediatric diseases. To perform pediatric research it is essential to have collaboration between basic scientists, translational scientists and also pediatricians. For example, it is important to evaluate a novel finding in cellular and animal models of a pediatric disease and then to get pediatric patient biomaterials, such as blood or tissue, and validate the clinical and human relevance of these findings. Second, it is important to strengthen the collaboration between academic research centers, private foundations, NIH and the pharmaceutical industry to expedite the clinical development of novel exciting findings in pediatric research.
Hood: Outside of your professional life, what’s something about you that might surprise people?
Dr. Iliopoulos: I started my professional career as a faculty at Harvard and UCLA medical schools and then founding a biotech company developing AI-derived therapeutics for autoimmune diseases. However, few people know about my love in finance and economics and the fact that I developed a novel financial valuation model that resulted in a best-seller Amazon book. Furthermore, I have a large (>3,000) collection of books, including a rare 17th century book describing the potential role of inflammation in human diseases.
CSO Takeaway & Resources
Read the CSO Takeaway – a short teaching companion to this Spotlight, with worksheets and decision tools for early-career investigators.
A Decision Framework for Junior Investigators: Is Your Science Ready, and Who Should Fund It?
Why this matters and what Dr. Iliopoulos’s story illustrates
Dr. Iliopoulos’s reflections name something that science-funding research has documented empirically: peer review systems, particularly at NIH, tend to favor incremental work over unconventional ideas. Franzoni and Stephan frame this as a structural feature of agencies spending public money under political scrutiny, the incentive to show visible, low variance return biases review against unconventional or high-risk proposals. Foundations answer to different stakeholders, which gives them more latitude, though how they use that latitude varies by foundation and by award.
Dr. Iliopoulos’s Hood-funded systems biology work is a vivid case: he has noted it “had minimal chance of being funded by NIH” at the time, yet it catalyzed an R01, a multi-institutional center at UCLA, a biotech company, and a therapy now in Phase 2/3 trials. The lesson isn’t “foundations over NIH”, it’s that different funders, and different awards within the same funder, have different risk appetites, preliminary-data expectations, and career-stage targets. Matching your idea and your moment to the right one is a strategic decision, not a default.
What follows is a two-part algorithm: first, a readiness check; second, a funder-matching algorithm.
Part 1 — Readiness Check: Is Your Science Ready to Submit?
Download: Readiness Check Worksheet
Work through these seven checkpoints before deciding where to apply. If you can’t clear a checkpoint, the answer is usually “refine the project” rather than “submit anyway.”
The first checkpoint asks why the work matters; the last checkpoint asks why it matters for the funder you’re approaching. Everything between is about whether you can credibly do the work.
- Can you define the unmet need?What is the clinical or scientific gap this work addresses and why does it matter now? Reviewers at every funder want to see the “so what” early. For pediatric work especially, naming the unmet need in concrete terms addressing which children, what outcome, and what current care fails to deliver is often more persuasive than the underlying science itself.
- Can you state the question in one sentence?If it takes a paragraph, it isn’t sharp enough yet. Reviewers and collaborators both need a question, not a topic.
- What is your testable assertion? A hypothesis, or a defined exploratory aim? Hypothesis-driven and discovery-driven (systems / unbiased) work are both legitimate, but they target different funders and different awards within the same funder. Know which you have.
- Is your preliminary data matched to your target funder’s expectations? NIH R01 reviewers expect strong pilot data. NIH’s High-Risk, High-Reward program and some foundation awards explicitly do not require it. Other funding calls expect a clear premise and supporting data. Mismatched expectations are a common misstep, and funder choice should drive how much pilot work you front-load.
- Do you have the resources and the right team to execute the science? Is there access to well-characterized cellular, animal, organoid models, or clinical cohorts to test your hypothesis? “Well-characterized” matters: reviewers discount unfamiliar or inadequately validated models. “Access” includes the collaborators you’d need to obtain these resources, not only what you already own. Multi-factorial pediatric diseases rarely yield to a single-PI design. Dr. Iliopoulos’s pivotal work spanned basic, translational, and clinical teams across Harvard and UCLA. Ensure your team spans the proposed science, reviewers notice when the team is thin.
- What puts you in a unique position to do this work? For early-career investigators, this is usually an unconventional methodology, unusual access (to cohorts, models, or data), or a distinctive collaborative team, something that makes the project feasible in your hands when it wouldn’t be in someone else’s. For more established investigators, uniqueness is typically evidenced by a demonstrated track record in the area: prior publications, earlier awards, and visible contribution to the field you’re now proposing to extend.
- Can you clearly articulate why the funder’s mission cares about your work? Every foundation and every NIH institute has a defined audience and a defined mission. A proposal that can’t clearly map its question onto the specific funder’s mission will underperform in review regardless of scientific quality. Before you submit, write a single sentence that connects your work to the funder’s mission in the funder’s own terms stating what population, what outcome, what advance they explicitly say they want to support. If you can’t write that sentence, either reframe the proposal or choose a different funder.
Clear all seven checkpoints? Move to Part 2.
Part 2 — Funder-Matching Algorithm
Download: Funding Source Decision Tree
A framing note before the branches. “Foundation” is not a synonym for “high-risk” — or for any single career stage. Foundations span the full risk spectrum and the full career arc. Hood Foundation is a deliberate example of this range: it supports early-independent pediatric investigators across risk profiles — from bold methodological bets like Dr. Iliopoulos’s early systems biology work, to hypothesis-driven pediatric projects with a clear premise and pilot data. The branches below are about project character and career moment, not funder type — and many funders, Hood included, appear on more than one branch.
Branch A — Unconventional or high-risk approach, limited preliminary data
Look for funders and award mechanisms that explicitly do not require strong preliminary data.
Branch B — Strong premise, hypothesis-driven, pilot data in hand
This is where the bulk of biomedical research lives, and where foundations are often under-considered. For pediatric-focused work especially, a mission-aligned foundation is often a faster, better-fit path than NIH, independent of how innovative the proposal is.
Branch C — Early independence / first lab / career transition
Career development awards that fund the person and catalyze independence, not just the project. NIH K awards (K08, K23, K99/R00); Doris Duke Clinical Scientist Development Award; Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship. The Hood Foundation Child Health Research Award is designed specifically to catalyze early independent careers in pediatric research.
Branch D — Disease-specific question
Mission-aligned disease foundations: JDRF, ACS, MJFF, ALS Association, Alzheimer’s Association, CureSearch. Often smaller award amounts but strategically valuable for generating preliminary data that feeds a later R01 or a larger foundation award.
Branch E — Multi-institutional team science
NIH Multi-PI R01, U01/U19 cooperative agreements, and foundation collaborative programs (e.g., Chan Zuckerberg, Allen Discovery Centers). Often for more established investigators.
A Shortcut Heuristic
Three common patterns, each with a natural home:
- Unconventional or high-risk methodology, thin preliminary data because the approach is new. Start with foundations, Keck, or NIH’s HRHR program. Use the foundation award to generate the preliminary data the R01 will later require. This was Dr. Iliopoulos’s path.
- Clear hypothesis, solid preliminary data, pediatric or mission-aligned focus. Don’t default to the R01 just because the science is well developed. Foundations should be considered and are often on a faster cycle, with review criteria well-calibrated to pediatric work. For mission-aligned projects especially, a foundation is a peer path, not a backup.
- Early in your independent career, regardless of risk profile. Foundation early-career awards are often the right first stop before, or in parallel with, NIH K awards. They fund the investigator’s independence, not just a single project, and for pediatric investigators they are frequently the career-catalyzing award that unlocks the R01, the center, the program, and everything downstream.
Supporting Literature
Stephan & Franzoni, Encouraging High-Risk High-Reward Research at NIH (Brookings, 2023) — foundational framing of why NIH peer review is structurally risk-averse. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/StephanFranzoniFinal-3.pdf
NIAID, Choose an Award by Career Stage — practical NIH-side decision framework. https://www.niaid.nih.gov/grants-contracts/choose-award-career-stage
Azoulay, Graff Zivin & Manso, Incentives and Creativity: Evidence from the Academic Life Sciences — empirical comparison showing that HHMI’s longer, more forgiving cycles produce more novel, higher-impact science than NIH’s short-cycle R01 model. http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/manso/hhmi.pdf
Franzoni & Stephan, Uncertainty and Risk-Taking in Science (Research Policy, 2023) — framework separating novelty from feasibility in how reviewers assess proposals. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S004873332200227X
NIH, High-Risk, High-Reward Research (HRHR) Program — NIH’s explicit institutional response to its own risk-aversion, including the Pioneer (DP1) and New Innovator (DP2) awards. https://commonfund.nih.gov/highrisk