During the fiscal year that ended June 30, the medical center supported organizations through 169 grants to address critical needs, including access to healthcare, housing stability, food security and other essential resources.

A $300,000 grant to the Los Angeles Food Policy Council will strengthen regional food access through CalFresh outreach and enrollment efforts. The funding will also support the infrastructure of local farmers markets and coordinated strategies to protect food-purchasing power and access to healthy, culturally relevant food for low-income residents.

The medical center has invested in regional food systems by backing local growers and issuing grants to programs such as FeedLA through the YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles as well as YMCA Center for Community Well-Being locations.

A grant to ALMA Backyard Farms helped expand the urban agriculture infrastructure, workforce training opportunities and fresh food distribution in communities with limited access to healthy food and green space. This contribution includes aid toward the development of a new farm hub in Carson.

Shifts in public program protocols continue to reshape the social services landscape. Cedars-Sinai has pledged to expand its investments in community-based organizations.

The latest round of grants also included $250,000 to Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County to assist residents navigating programs like Medi-Cal, CalFresh, Covered California and Medicare.

To support healthy aging and quality of life programs, Cedars-Sinai awarded two grants to expand services for seniors and their caregivers. A grant to Comprehensive Community Health Centers will help increase behavioral health engagement and ensure those in need can receive effective medical treatment.

Watts Healthcare also received a grant to aid its Healthy Aging and Wellness Program that promotes physical, emotional and social wellbeing through preventive care, fitness and nutritional support, and mental health resources.

Cedars-Sinai funded two initiatives focused on homeless prevention and long-term support to those facing housing instability. According to the 2025 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count, more than 72,000 people experience homelessness on any given night across L.A. County.

A grant to the housing advocacy organization Brilliant Corners supported the Los Angeles County Homeless Prevention Unit’s efforts to provide flexible financial assistance to at-risk young adults in danger of losing housing.

A grant to local nonprofit Housing Works will fund enhanced training, professional development and wellness support for frontline staff serving those who have faced homelessness.

A Cedars-Sinai grant to Planned Parenthood Los Angeles will support care through the organization’s network of health centers, school-based wellbeing centers and its community outreach efforts.

“Cedars-Sinai is deeply compelled to continue providing support to organizational partners in their dedication to helping communities across this region,” said Andrea Iloulian, MPP, executive director of Grantmaking at Cedars-Sinai. “These organizations are on the front lines of improving access to medical care for everyone as well as providing food and housing assistance. This will help ensure vulnerable populations have the support and supplies they need to survive and thrive.”

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The researchers will use stem cells to improve the effectiveness of oral tissue grafting—a procedure thousands of patients undergo each year in which tissue is transplanted from another part of the mouth to improve or repair trauma from significant tissue loss. In about 1 in 4 patients, the grafts fail due to various factors, including lack of blood supply to the graft, infection and poor healing.

The study is funded by a new five-year $5.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and supports a multidisciplinary team from Guerin Children’s, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

"Our goal is to deepen our understanding of the oral mucosa and to learn how to enhance mouth tissue healing,” said Ophir Klein, MD, PhD, co-principal investigator of the study, executive director of Guerin Children’s and executive vice dean of Children’s Health at Cedars-Sinai. “We plan to turn stem cells into personalized oral tissue grafts that we hope will improve outcomes for patients.”

Oral mucosa is the soft tissue lining the inside of the mouth, including the cheeks, gums and tongue. It serves as a protective barrier against bacterial infection and injury, aiding in essential functions like speaking, chewing and swallowing.

For the preclinical research, the team will grow oral tissue in the lab using induced pluripotent stem cells—adult cells that are reprogrammed into cells that can be turned into virtually any cell type—from laboratory mice. The team hopes to be able to produce, in any needed amount, personalized living grafts with blood vessels that closely resemble natural oral tissue.

“Using advanced bioengineering tools, we can create complex tissues with tiny blood vessel networks that build themselves in a short period of time,” said Zev Jordan Gartner, PhD, co-principal investigator on the study and professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at the UCSF School of Pharmacy.

This method, Gartner said, will help the team design custom tissue grafts that could potentially be used in any part of the mouth.

Kevin Matthew Byrd, DDS, PhD, co-principal investigator on the study and assistant professor in the Philips Institute for Oral Health Research at the VCU School of Dentistry, said the research could potentially transform reconstructive care for head and mouth injuries.

“By customizing grafts to fit individual patient needs, we are advancing toward more personalized and effective dental treatments,” Byrd said. “This research has the power to notably improve care quality and establish new dental health standards.”

Cedars-Sinai Health Sciences University is advancing groundbreaking research and educating future leaders in medicine, biomedical sciences and allied health sciences. Learn more about the university.