To provide consumers with the freshest, highest-quality fruits and vegetables, researchers have long been interested in managing the production of ethylene, which is a naturally occurring hormone in fruit that causes ripening, and eventually, softening and rot. Effective quality control methods would mean benefits to consumers such as improved overall tartness and taste.

North Carolina State researchers from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Edward C. Sisler, Ph.D., and Sylvia M. Blankenship, Ph.D., have discovered the secret to keeping fruits and vegetables juicy, crisp and harvest-quality-fresh through storage and the trip to the marketplace. They uncovered 1-MCP (1-methylcyclopropene), a patented technology that provides a method of inhibiting the ethylene response of fruits and vegetables, thereby regulating the ripening process and lengthening the shelf life of produce.

Rohm and Hass Company recognized the commercial potential of the university’s discovery and worked with the Office of Technology Transfer to license the ethylene-inhibiting technology. Rohm and Hass formed AgroFresh to develop its product platform. Based on this successful union, AgroFresh developed a product called SmartFresh^® a synthetic produce enhancer. Ethylene-sensitive crops such as apples, avocados, bananas, broccoli, cucumbers, leafy vegetables, mangoes, melons, pears, plums and tomatoes are now candidates for longer life spans and fresher taste. SmartFresh^® helps drive growth in the produce industry by ensuring that fresh food crops get to market, which means consumers can expect fresher fruits and vegetables year-round.

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This story was originally published in 2007.

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Not so long ago, HIV sufferers took 10 to 15 pills a day and still the outcome was often bleak. Today, more than 80 percent of HIV patients take at least one of the drugs developed by Emory scientists in a single tablet, once a day. Although it’s not a cure, the treatment restores life as it lowers the daily drug regimen burden, diminishes side effects, relieves disease symptoms, and adds longevity.

“They are what we call DNA chain terminators,” explains Liotta. “Think of viral DNA as a line of rail boxcars, the drugs destroy the hitch so no more cars are added. The virus accepts the compounds and mistakes them for normal nucleotides, but they lack a function group necessary to copy the RNA to DNA.”

View Accompanying Video Series 
 
“That’s the thing, thousands of people make contributions to the ultimate success of this drug,” says Liotta. Indeed, many people have persevered at getting the drugs to patients around the globe. Gilead and Bristol-Myers Squibb gained FDA approval in 2006 for the first once-a-day, single tablet regimen for adults with HIV called Atripla®. Atripla contains three drugs—efavirenz (Sustiva®), emtricitabine (Emtriva®), and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (Viread®), combined in one tablet and hence can be used as a stand-alone therapy in patients. Atripla reduces pill burden and simplifies dosing schedules, which not only makes things easier and more tolerable for patients, but also greatly eases storage, transport and distribution of the drug to places with less than ideal conditions.

“Gilead did a tremendous amount of work in stability studies to increase the shelf stability of the drugs in hot, humid climates and poor storage conditions typical in third world countries,” says Liotta.

Atripla is marketed jointly by Gilead and Bristol-Myers Squibb in United States, Canada and Europe, but in much of the developing world, marketing and distribution is handled by Merck & Co., Inc. In addition, Gilead established partnerships with 10 Indian companies to produce and distribute quality, low-cost generic versions of Gilead’s HIV medications in 95 developing countries.

Other industry collaborations include local manufacturing and distribution by South Africa’s Aspen Pharmacare and a manufacturing collaboration in the Bahamas with PharmaChem Technologies and the Grand Bahama Port Authority.

Meanwhile, Gilead is hard at work clearing the political and regulatory paths in developing world countries.

“If you work with import waivers you might get products into a country one month, but not the next,” explains Clifford Samuel, senior director of International Access Operations at Gilead. “We prefer to take the high road and pursue full regulatory approval in each country so that patients have sustainable access to the antivirals they need on an uninterrupted schedule.”

This is no easy task as the regulatory process varies greatly by country and not all governments are motivated by humanitarian concerns. Nonetheless, Samuel and his team continue to push their way through the various regulatory challenges in Africa, Eastern Europe, China, Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.

While these highly coordinated efforts seem brilliant in their simplicity, the history of FTC, like other new discoveries, is a bit more convoluted. FTC was licensed by Emory in 1996 to Triangle Pharmaceuticals, a biotech company founded by Schinazi and others in 1995. In 2003, Gilead acquired Triangle for $482 million and in the same year, Emtriva was approved by the FDA. In 2002, Shire and GlaxoSmithKline jointly licensed Emory’s patents related to 3TC, now used in at least 5 products. In 2005, Gilead Sciences and Royalty Pharma signed a deal with Emory to buy its royalty interest for FTC for $525 million. Gilead obtained approval for Truvada®, a fixed-dose combination of Emtriva and Viread in 2004. Today’s combined efforts of Emory, Gilead, Merck and Bristol-Myers have saved millions of lives worldwide.

Although these results are very gratifying, this is far from the end of the story. Emory researchers are expanding their search for more lifesaving drugs.

The new Emory Institute for Drug Discovery will open either late fall or early winter of 2009. Within its walls, scientists will attack several diseases with an unfailing determination to stop their trek across human lives.

“We may not make a fortune, but we will make a difference,” said Liotta.

Related Blogs:

• Evolution of an Epidemic: Taming a Killer Virus
• Marianne Swanson: The Survivor
• Nina Martinez: The HIV Positive Twin
• Dennis Liotta: The Chemist
• Raymond Schinazi: The Virologist
• George Painter: The Corporate Partner
• Jeff Lennox: The HIV Physician

 

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A precision cancer therapy procedure invented at University College Cork (UCC) treats solid tumors of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, including difficult-to-treat esophageal cancer, in an outpatient setting, minimizing hospital time.

Developed in the Cork Cancer Research Centre at UCC, the ePORE® EndoVE® therapy is composed of a bedside pulse generator, ePORE, that generates high-frequency pulsed electrical fields, coupled to the EndoVE electrode device which is applied directly to tumors to ‘electroporate’ the tissue (to make cells porous).

Electroporation can be used in combination with low-dose chemotherapy drug like bleomycin. A significant advantage of this targeted precision treatment is that it can be delivered under local anesthesia in an out-patient setting, so hospital time is minimized. The treatment has minimal side-effects and preserves surrounding healthy tissue.

ePORE EndoVe is protected by two patents granted to UCC which were subsequently licensed to establish a new spinout, Mirai Medical. Declan Soden, who co-invented the technology, left UCC to lead the company and commercialize the research that was started by his colleague, co-inventor and one of Ireland’s top surgeons, the late Professor Gerry O’Sullivan.

Mirai has raised approximately €10M in investment to date which is being used to support clinical studies ongoing in several European hospitals, including the VECTOR trial in patients with esophageal cancer. Approximately half of patients diagnosed with this cancer present with unresectable or metastatic disease and the ePORE therapy aims to control swallowing, improve quality of life, and prolong survival.

ePORE was also recently trialed on gynecological cancer patients at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital, London, where response to treatment was very positive. ePore may provide an alternative treatment for young patients who may not wish to embark on an excisional procedure which may have an adverse effect on their future fertility.

Mirai has rolled out ePORE therapy to 45 hospitals since the device was first CE-marked in Europe in January 2020. Mirai’s business development strategy consists of establishing strategic partnerships with surgical Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) at specialty cancer hospitals across the world.

Kevin Dalton is an experienced commercialization manager within UCC Innovation, the technology transfer office at UCC. He played a key role in assisting Declan Soden spinout Mirai Medical in 2017. His previous experience working in a startup together with his skills and dealmaking expertise (RTTP designation received in 2015) were instrumental in finalizing a business plan and completing license negotiations in a professional and timely manner. 
 

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This story was originally published in 2022.

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After 10 years of research, Thomas K. Landauer, Ph.D., a psychology professor at University of Colorado in Boulder, Peter Foltz, Ph.D., a psychology professor at New Mexico State University, and Darrell Laham, Ph.D., a graduate student at University of Colorado, invented Intelligent Essay Assessor (IEA). IEA is Web-based and conducts sophisticated mathematical and statistical evaluations of the semantic content of writing to issue a grade that correlates closely with what teachers or test examiners would give.

IEA automatically assesses and critiques electronically submitted essays providing feedback to both the student and instructor.

The software relies on Latent Semantic Analysis to evaluate the quality of the semantic content of writing. Computer modules are used to conduct a mathematical analysis of the semantic space, evaluate the words in the text, compare sections of the essay and integrate the scores from each module to arrive at a final score. IEA can also identify areas of weakness, recommend instructional materials and identify sections in need of rewriting.

Initial funding came through a series of research grants from the National Science Foundation, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force. IEA was invented in 1997 and patented in 2002 by Knowledge Analysis Technologies, LLC, a company formed by Landauer, Foltz and Laham. The company was acquired by Pearson Education in 2004 at which time it became known as Pearson Knowledge Technologies. IEA has scored more than two million student essays.

 

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This story was originally published in 2007.

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Surgery has always been the most accepted treatment for early-stage colorectal cancers, but a groundbreaking discovery from the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California will likely provide physicians with more treatment options.

In 1998 associate professor of medicine Heinz-Joseph Lenz, M.D., and colleagues David Park, Ph.D., Jan Stoehlmacher, Ph.D., Sheeja Thankappan-Pullarkat, M.D. and Yi Ping Xiong, M.D. discovered a group of biomarkers that are associated with colorectal cancer.
Officially called “Medical Diagnostic Predictors of Therapy Response Rate,” this technology will help scientists predict therapy response rates and overall outcomes and survival for patients with colorectal cancer, helping caregivers immediately determine the best methods for treatment.

In 2007 the technology was licensed to Abraxis Bioscience, a biotechnology company located in Los Angeles. The goal of continued research is to combine prognostic markers with specific therapeutic agents, which will allow clinicians to tailor therapy to the molecular profile of the patient while minimizing life-threatening toxicities.

The end result has the potential to improve the overall outcome and survival rate for patients with colorectal cancer.
 

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This story was originally published in 2008.

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A serious side effect from kidney failure is the depletion of vitamin D hormone, which is manufactured by the kidneys and regulates calcium absorption from the intestines. Without adequate levels of vitamin D hormone in the bloodstream, the body cannot process enough calcium from digested food and instead must draw calcium into the blood from the skeleton. Over time this leads to weakened, brittle bones that break easily. To fight this condition, in the early 1990s, scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison invented paricalcitol, a synthetic form of vitamin D hormone that regulates calcium in the bloodstream.

Biochemistry professor Hector DeLuca, PhD, led the research team that discovered paricalcitol (now sold commercially as Zemplar™). Initial funding for the research was provided by the National Institutes of Health.

When calcium levels in the blood are low, the parathyroid gland produces parathyroid hormones that trigger calcium release from the bones. During kidney failure the parathyroid gland is in a state of over-production known as secondary hyperparathyroidism. Paricalcitol suppresses the activity of the parathyroid gland and the overproduction of parathyroid hormone by increasing calcium levels in the blood. Paricalcitol is also safer than other vitamin D hormone therapies because it has lower risk for elevating blood calcium to dangerous levels.

The use of vitamin D hormone therapy in chronic kidney disease patients has increased since paricalcitol was commercialized as Zemplar™. Paricalcitol generates more than $30 million each year in royalties for the University of Wisconsin, where research continues for clinical applications of vitamin D in psoriasis, osteoporosis, cancer and a variety of autoimmune/inflammatory diseases.

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This story was originally published in 2008.

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In recent years, the popularity of single-serve coffee makers has increased dramatically. The handy appliances — commonplace in many homes, office break rooms and hotels — provide convenience for consumers, but at a high cost to the environment

The single-serve pods used by these machines generate enormous amounts of waste. Such concerns prompted officials in Hamburg, Germany to ban the purchase of single-serve pods for government buildings. But elsewhere, sales flourish and the pods usually end up in landfills. One estimate suggests that the volume of pods sold each year for one of the most popular brands — the Keurig K-Cup — could circle the globe more than 10 times. Because of that massive waste problem, the K-Cup’s inventor has said publicly that he sometimes regrets his creation.  

Thanks to researchers at University of Guelph, there’s a much more earth-friendly coffee pod available now— one that’s not only compostable, but also incorporates material that coffee roasters would often haul to landfills.
 
By 2011, Canada’s largest supermarket chain, Loblaws, realized that although consumers loved single-serve coffee, they didn’t love the idea of creating so much waste. Loblaws turned to its supplier, Club Coffee, to identify someone who could create a compostable coffee pod. After two years, Club Coffee still couldn’t find a solution — so the CEO asked Ontario’s deputy minister of agriculture if she knew anyone who might help.
 
That led to a meeting in January 2014, where Club Coffee explained its predicament to Amar Mohanty, Ph.D., director of University of Guelph's Bioproducts Discovery and Development Centre. Atul Bali, CEO of Competitive Green Technologies, also attended that meeting. He and Mohanty had worked together on previous projects to commercialize university technologies, and they shared an overarching goal: reduce the world’s dependence on petroleum-based plastics by developing bio-based materials made with natural fibers or fillers.
 
To develop the compostable coffee pod, the biggest challenge was creating the bio-material for the ring that secures the coffee pod’s pouch. That’s because Mohanty needed to design something that was compostable and cost-effective. At the time, Club Coffee’s pods had rings made from polypropylene, a petroleum-based plastic that costs significantly less than typical bio-degradable plastic. “People are very interested in being green, but they aren’t interested in paying more,” says Mohanty, who has studied bio-polymers for more than 25 years. To create a ring that didn’t exceed Club Coffee’s cost requirements, Mohanty knew he would need to add an inexpensive natural fiber to the bio-degradable plastic. He wasn’t sure which fiber he would use — but the material would have to be readily available in large quantities.
 
After about four months of talking with companies in the coffee industry, Mohanty found his answer. He learned that before coffee beans are roasted, the skin of the bean is removed. It's called chaff, and coffee roasters consider it a waste product. They pay companies to haul chaff away and spread it in fields, dump it in landfills, or burn it. When Mohanty heard that, something clicked. “If I see something going to waste, my mind starts wondering, ‘How can I utilize that?’”
 
With coffee chaff, Mohanty had an ideal inexpensive natural fiber. The coffee roasters were glad to have their chaff hauled away for free, so Mohanty and his researchers could use it. By September 2014, he had a ring formulation with bio-degradable plastic that consisted of about 25 percent chaff. That allowed Mohanty to reduce the cost sufficiently. What’s more, chaff represented a natural fiber that wouldn’t encounter supply shortages. It’s an important consideration, since supply-chain problems often create big hurdles for bio-based composite materials. Within Canada and the United States alone, Mohanty estimates that roasters produce more than 10 million pounds of chaff each year. His approach has the added benefit of finding value in discarded industrial material. As Bali puts it: “The use of chaff is totally ideal from a waste management perspective — turning waste to value.”
 
In March 2015, University of Guelph's Catalyst Centre filed a patent on Mohanty’s innovation and exclusively licensed the technology to Competitive Green Technologies in June 2015. It took less than a month to negotiate that license, says Steve De Brabandere, associate director for the University of Guelph's Catalyst Centre. “We’ve done four licensing agreements with them, and we anticipate doing more in the future."
   
De Brabandere observes that Mohanty’s formulation creates a virtuous circle — it helps keep chaff out of landfills and that chaff allows cost-effective production of compostable pods. He’s also struck by the close working relationship between Mohanty’s research center and Bali’s company, Competitive Green Technologies. It played a critical role in the commercialization of the formulation, he says. “For anything like this, it’s not the type of technology where you make it in a lab and then throw it over the wall,” says De Brabandere. “It’s not like we’ve developed a pharmaceutical drug that isn’t going to change.” Instead, it requires plenty of willingness to tweak.  
 
Bali agrees. “When you prepare a new material in a laboratory, maybe you use four pounds of it in experiments,” he says. "When you now take that to the real world, the customer is looking for a trial run of 1,000 pounds to put in big molding machines.” That can entail considerable changes to fit real-life manufacturing conditions.
 
When Mohanty’s formulation first ran through a large molding machine, it didn’t work properly, says Bali. “But we did three iterations and by the third time, we nailed it." By November 2015, Competitive Green Technologies was able to use a mold that produced 64 of the rings every 10 seconds. “Right now, the molder is molding half million rings a day,” says Bali.
 
The compostable coffee pod that includes the ring is called PurPod100 — it’s a Club Coffee product that is now supplied to large retailers in Canada and the United States, including Loblaws, Kroger, Walmart and Costco. When the Biodegradable Polymer Institute tested the PurPod100 to provide compostable certification, it found that the pod was 100 percent composted in about 45 days. Without the help of several researchers at his center, Mohanty notes that it would have taken much longer to develop the compostable pod. “For this type of product, one person might be able to do it in three or four years if they work very hard,” says Mohanty. “Our team of researchers was able to complete this in less than 18 months."
 
The single-serve coffee maker at his research center uses the compostable pods — but don’t expect Mohanty to make beverages with those. He’s an avid tea drinker, and one of his next projects involves developing a compostable single-serve pod for tea (it won’t include coffee chaff, because the coffee odor would permeate the tea).
 
“I’m a nature loving guy,” says Mohanty. “We are trying to save the world from greenhouse gases — so anything I do, I try to focus on being more environmentally friendly.”

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Ceramics are typically manufactured using prototype negative molds. Creating the mold is a time-consuming step that adds extra cost to the manufacturing process.

Faculty at Bowling Green State University (BGSU) in Bowling Green,  Ohio, have developed a rapid prototyping technology that uses a digital file to directly create durable ceramic products that can be glazed and fired in a kiln, without the need for a negative mold. 

The construction of ceramic objects from digital models technology was developed in 2005-2006 by John Balistreri, Sebastien Dion and Amber Reed. Funding of $50,000 was provided by the BGSU Office of Sponsored Programs and Research. The research team invented specific ceramic recipes and binders that, when used in a rapid prototyping machine, produce fully functional and durable ceramic objects. This technology eliminates the need for negative molds in the manufacturing process. It can produce an unlimited variety of precision, inert and heatresistant ceramic parts, including insulators, gaskets, filters and engine parts.

Architects and designers can create ceramic components directly from digital drawings of portions of walls, floors, and details of custom patterns in 3-D relief without going through  an elaborate production process.  Archaeologists, paleontologists, and  restorers can also use this technology to  quickly complete, reconstruct, or repair ancient fossils or artifacts through 3-D scanning and modeling techniques.  

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Colorectal cancer is a leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide and claims about 677,000 men and women annually, according to the World Health Organization. This cancer burden can be decreased if cases are detected and treated early. Unfortunately, most individuals over 50 avoid the unpleasant and invasive tests that can screen for colorectal cancer or precancerous growths—until now.

A new 3-D Virtual Colonoscopy, also known as computed tomography (CT) colonography, is changing the way people view colorectal screening. It is expected to become more commonly used than a conventional optical colonoscopy thanks to its non-invasive nature. The procedure takes less than 15 minutes and typically requires the patient to drink a contrast solution, which eliminates the need for a harsh purgative prior to the scanning. The patient, without being sedated and after a small tube is inserted in the rectum to inflate the colon with CO2, lays on his/her back and stomach while a CT scan takes pictures of the abdomen and pelvis in several seconds.

This fast, safe and cost effective procedure is based on patented diagnostic 3-D imaging software, techniques and a computer system developed by a Stony Brook University research team led by its inventor, Arie E. Kaufman, a Distinguished Professor and Chairman of the Department of Computer Science who pioneered the field of “volumetric representation.” Unlike an ordinary 2-D computer image, a 3-D volumetric representation is a stack of 2-D images laid on top of each other forming a continuous 3-D space. Development of volumetric representation, which was funded by the National Science Foundation, has led to a number of advances in software for graphics display and graphics acceleration hardware.

In the case of the 3-D Virtual Colonoscopy, approved for use in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration, this innovative computer graphics technology puts the CT images together into a high quality 3-D computerized image of the colon so a physician can see 100 percent of its surface vs. the estimated 77 percent with a conventional colonoscopy. After the exam a radiologist can actually “fly through” the patient’s virtual colon, from beginning to end, and around all folds, thoroughly searching for polyps that are as small as a few millimeters. By contrast, a conventional colonoscopy using a fiber optic endoscope is invasive and expensive, and requires a day of preparation involving laxatives and usually a day for the procedure since the patientmust be sedated. A conventional colonoscopy also carries the risk of perforation of the colon wall and even a small risk of death.

To date, more than 100 potentially lifesaving 3-D Virtual Colonoscopy systems have been used in the United States to screen thousands of patients. In 2008, both Siemens Healthcare of Germany and GE Healthcare of General Electric Company signed non-exclusive licenses for the portfolio of innovations developed by Kaufman and his team.

 

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A bone marrow or stem cell transplant in which stem cells from a donor (called allogeneic) are transplanted into a patient is often the best chance for a cure for patients with recurrent or resistant cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma.

However, of the roughly 25,000 patients who receive a stem cell transplant each year worldwide, only about half survive, according to the Worldwide Network for Blood & Marrow Transplantation. And until recently, researchers could not accurately predict the outcome of the costly and high-risk transplant procedure.

Insight Genetics hopes to reduce that uncertainty — and increase the success rate of stem cell transplants — by offering a new test to help identify the optimal stem cell donor. The assay, developed by researchers at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, provides information on both the patient’s cancer cells and the makeup of receptors on specialized immune cells called natural killer (NK) cells from donor candidates.

This test helps take the guesswork out of donor-patient matching for allogeneic stem cell transplants," says JonEric Pettersson, manager of commercial development at Insight Genetics.

The researcher behind the assay is Wing Leung, M.D., Ph.D., chair of St. Jude’s Department of Bone Marrow Transplant and Cellular Therapy.

Using the Immune System to Fight Cancer

Stem cells, which live in the spongy center (called marrow) of certain bones in the body, produce the body’s blood cells — including NK cells — that play a critical role in the immune system to fight off invading germs and cancer cells.A stem cell transplant essentially recruits a whole new defense against the disease by infusing stem cells from a well-matched donor into the patient to attack the cancer.

The Stem Cell Transplant

The majority of stem cell transplants are performed on patients with cancers that originate in blood cells, including leukemia, multiple myeloma and some lymphomas, that are highly resistant to standard treatments.

The stem cell transplantation procedure (also called a bone marrow or cord blood transplant) is typically preceded by chemotherapy and radiation therapy to eliminate as much of the cancer as possible.

“The chemo and radiation are harsh, but if it is effective, you eradicate 99.99 percent of the cancer cells,” says Stephan W. Morris, M.D., chief scientific officer at Insight Genetics. “However, that leaves a tiny percentage of cells that are able in some cases to re-grow and cause a recurrence. In a successful transplantation, the donor cells seek out the latent cancer cells, eradicate them, and you have the potential for a cure.” 

This desired characteristic of the donor cells is called the graft-versus-tumor (GVT) reaction.

Unfortunately, not all transplantations are a success. In some patients, the GVT reaction is robust — but in others, the effect is suboptimal. To better understand the molecular mechanisms that influence GVT in bone marrow transplants, Leung and his colleagues began studying the genetic makeup of NK cells in 2004.

Understanding Natural Killer Cells

Each NK cell has proteins extending from its surface called killer-cell immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIRs) that regulate the cell’s activity. Before NK cells attack and eliminate foreign cells in the body, these receptors must first recognize and bind to proteins or ligands (known as human leukocyte antigens or HLAs) on foreign cells.

Using a specially developed molecular assay to determine the genetic makeup of KIRs, Leung discovered that a specific KIR receptor — KIR2DL1 — varies from person to person. What’s more, he found that this variation in the NK cell’s gene content, as well as the matching between the donor KIR and recipient HLA, affects the strength of the cells’ immune response and its cancer-killing ability following transplantation.

Using the test to retrospectively analyze the outcomes of previous transplant procedures, Leung’s research team determined that NK cells expressing the stronger version of KIR2DL1 destroy cancer cells more effectively than cells expressing the weaker version of KIR2DL1. In a study by Leung and his colleagues published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the researchers demonstrated that children with leukemia were much more likely to survive their transplant and their disease was significantly less likely to progress when bone marrow transplants came from donors whose NK cells expressed the stronger form of KIR2DL1.

“It’s a three-fold difference, which is huge,” says Leung.

When HLA ligands in the patient’s body bind to KIRs on the donor’s NK cells, the receptor sends a signal to the NK that either activates or inhibits the attack mechanism. The balance between these activating and inhibiting signals plays an important role in the ability of NK cells to mount an effective GVT response.

Leung and his team also developed a second test to determine the type of HLA ligands present in the patient. The optimal stem cell recipient does not have ligands that will inhibit the donor’s NK cells, a situation referred to as a KIR-KIR ligand mismatch.

Accordingly, Leung had discovered that he could match donor stem cells that express the stronger form of KIR2DL1 with recipients that were less likely to inhibit those cells in order to greatly increase the stem cell transplantation success rates.

A Friend and Partner in Insight Genetics

After filing the patents for the KIR/KIR-ligand assay, St. Jude’s Office of Technology Licensing approached Insight Genetics as they knew the company’s scientific founder well.

Morris co-founded Insight Genetics in 2007 after working as a clinician and researcher on St. Jude’s staff for 25 years — helping to discover and characterize a number of oncogenes (including anaplastic lymphoma kinase, ALK, among others) — before beginning his commercial venture dedicated to providing companion diagnostics to the increasingly personalized treatments for cancer.

“After nearly 30 years in academic medicine I finally decided to scratch my entrepreneurial itch,” says Morris, who left St. Jude and joined the company full-time as chief scientific officer in 2012.

Insight Genetics obtained exclusive, worldwide licensing rights to KIR2DL1 coding sequences and the KIR/KIR-lligand assay, including unique probe and primer designs for developing the test.

The KIR/KIR-Ligand Assay

Now 20 employees strong, the company has been refining the assay for clinical use and plans to begin processing blood samples from donor candidates in its Nashville-based laboratory, Insight Molecular Labs, during the second quarter of 2014.

Depending on demand for the assay, the company may also develop a testing kit that can be sold to individual laboratories and bone marrow registries across the country so they can perform the assay on their own.

The automated KIR/KIR-ligand assay is a quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR)-based test that amplifies, or makes multiple copies of, the specific molecules of interest with a fluorescent label that is detected by an instrument common to clinical laboratories. The company hopes to return test results — indicating the optimal donor based on the presence of the stronger KIR receptor and a KIR-KIR ligand mismatch — within 48 hours.

“There’s a clear utility for this assay for leukemia patients,” says Morris. “But it also has potential for other diseases that are treated with bone marrow transplants.”

Leung says that more and more physicians are referring patients for stem cell transplants earlier in the cancer treatment process, not just at the end-stage of the disease.

“The stem cell transplant has become much safer as the technology has advanced,” he says. “Plus, stem cell transplantation is curative and more patients have access to transplant centers in 42 states now.”

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In the middle of 2003, Marc LaForce was having trouble sleeping. As the director of the Meningitis Vaccine Project (MVP), he was missing a vital piece of a difficult puzzle. The MVP sought to commercialize a vaccine that would help prevent Africa’s devastating epidemics of meningococcal meningitis, a bacterial infection of the brain and spinal cord. The largest documented outbreak, in 1996, sickened 250,000 people in Africa and caused 25,000 deaths. In 2002, a single West African country (Burkina Faso) had 13,000 meningitis cases and at least 1,500 deaths.

To succeed, the MVP needed a vaccine production method with two essential qualities: very effective and very affordable. But in mid-2003, that search hit a dead end. "All projects have their ups and downs," says LaForce, M.D. "We were in the downest of downs."

Then, in June 2003, LaForce had a pivotal conversation with Carl Frasch, Ph.D., a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) researcher. Frasch offered a new method for vaccine production developed by one of his colleagues, Robert Lee. It ultimately led to an unconventional licensing arrangement. The National Institutes of Health (NIH)—FDA's sister agency, responsible for FDA’s technology transfer—didn’t license the production method to a company. Instead, it transferred the technology to PATH, one of the nonprofit organizations that collaborated on the MVP. The result would be a vaccine—MenAfriVac—that could dramatically reduce the meningitis rate in Africa. What’s more, the product-development partnership that emerged could serve as a collaboration model for effectively tackling other public health issues in developing nations.

Debilitating Effects on Patients and Communities

The quest for a better, affordable vaccine began in 2001 with a $70 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That funded the creation of the MVP — a partnership between the World Health Organization and PATH, a Seattle, Wash., nonprofit with a public health focus. The MVP’s goal was no small matter, considering the meningitis epidemics that had plagued Africa for decades. The hardest-hit area is known as the African Meningitis Belt, consisting of about 20 countries stretching across the top of sub-Saharan Africa. From 1991 to 2010, nearly 1 million meningitis cases were reported in that area, along with about 100,000 deaths. Other parts of the world did not have the same grim figures. In the United States, for example, there were about 3,200 cases reported from 1998 to 2007, with less than 500 deaths from the disease.

Even when patients receive early diagnosis and treatment for meningitis, a full recovery is not guaranteed. As many as 10 percent of patients do not survive, and up to 20 percent of those who do survive are left with hearing loss, learning disabilities, or brain damage. 

In sub-Saharan African, meningitis is particularly debilitating, even beyond the individuals it infects. That’s because meningitis tends to strike people age 30 and younger, who are often a household's main wage-earner. Says Steven Ferguson, deputy director, licensing and entrepreneurship at the NIH's Office of Technology Transfer: "The disease is quite significant, not only in terms of mortality, but also the economic impact for the patients and their families."

Veering From the Traditional Licensing Path

Vaccines have been available in the African Meningitis Belt for more than 30 years, but they typically provided short-term immunity that sometimes only lasted for several months, and did not help children younger than 2 years old. The MVP wanted to improve this by providing a conjugate vaccine, a particular type of vaccine proven to be more effective. Originally developed by NIH scientists, conjugate vaccines take a polysaccharide molecule from the outer layer of a disease-causing bacteria (in this case,the group A meningococcal bacterium), and attach it to a "carrier" protein. This boosts immunity to the pathogen, helping the immune system to swiftly attack the pathogen even if it invades several years later.  

At the project's outset, LaForce and WHO staff visited Africa to talk with public health officials there. It soon became clear that a more-effective vaccine would not be enough. It had to be affordable — and to African public health officials, that meant a conjugate vaccine costing no more than 50 cents a dose.

It was an audacious goal. In the United States, for example, conjugate vaccines often cost $150 or more, says LaForce.

A Game-Changing Conversation

In early 2003, the MVP leadership thought they had lined up a partnership with a lab that would transfer a conjugation method for the vaccine. But, as LaForce puts it, "It was an arrangement that did not work out." That left the MVP in a precarious spot. In June 2003, LaForce stood in front of a WHO panel in Geneva and informed them that the $70 million project still had no conjugation method. At that moment, the vaccine project did not exactly seem poised for success.

But before he left, LaForce met someone who also happened to be visiting Geneva: Carl Frasch, Ph.D., chief, Laboratory of Polysaccharides, Division of Bacterial Products at the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. LaForce described his predicament, and Frasch told him about a scientist in his lab, Robert Lee, Ph.D., who had developed a new conjugation method. “He said, ‘Why don’t you come and see us?’” says LaForce. "It was a game-changer."  Three days later, LaForce was in Washington, D. C., at the FDA, marveling at what the researchers had developed.

The chemistry used in the conjugation method is not new — it is an existing reaction that has been used for other scientific applications since the 1960s, as Lee is quick to point out. But it had not been used for conjugate vaccine production, due to reliability and reproducibility concerns. The major problem was precipitation in the vaccine, which resulted in the formation  of unwanted solids.

"I was bothered by that,” says Lee. “But then I thought, ‘Hey, there is no reason why it cannot be overcome.’" After more than a year, Lee solved the precipitation problem by keeping the solution pH between 10 and 11. Lee’s refinements led to an extremely efficient method that aligned perfectly with MVP’s goals. As LaForce points out:

Conjugation methods for vaccines represent highly prized, highly protected intellectual property for pharmaceutical companies. So when the FDA’s conjugation method was licensed to PATH, one of the two organizations behind MVP, it represented a dramatic turning point for the project.

The nonexclusive license transfer to PATH was handled by NIH’s Office of Technology Transfer, which played a vital role, says LaForce.  "When you're developing contracts, they can go on forever," he says. But with the NIH, it only took about four months. “They were enormously helpful in getting this facilitated,” says LaForce, who retired from his MVP director position in 2012. "The whole process moved flawlessly." Conducting these license negotiations on behalf of NIH was Peter Soukas, a technology licensing specialist in the NIH Office of Technology Transfer.

Thanks to the efficient and expedient technology transfer process, the vaccine project finally had the right method, but PATH still needed a manufacturer to produce the vaccine for less than 50 cents per dose. That company turned out to be Serum Institute of India Ltd. (SII), one of the largest suppliers of vaccines globally. SII told LaForce and his colleagues that the company would have to take on significant business risks to manufacture this new vaccine at such a low price. But SII also decided the benefits far outweighed the risks, considering the expertise the company would gain from making this new vaccine and the contribution it would make in solving a substantial public health problem.

As part of the agreement, the FDA shared its conjugate vaccine know-how in a truly collaborative way. Instead of receiving written guidance for the production technique, two scientists came to the FDA lab in December 2003 to gain expertise in person. "For three weeks, we worked side by side, day and night, and produced 12 small vaccine batches," says Lee. "They had never been in the field of conjugated vaccines, so this was a very good head start for them."

A Model to Emulate

After clinical trials demonstrated that the vaccine (named MenAfriVac) was safe and effective, vaccinations began in Africa in 2010. MenAfriVac quickly delivered on its promise of improved immunity. In 2011, three countries that had been involved in the vaccine’s initial rollout — Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger — had the lowest number of group A meningitis cases ever recorded during an epidemic season.

By the end of 2012, more than 100 million people in Africa had received the vaccine.

Immunity from a single dose is expected to last up to 10 years — compared to previous meningitis vaccines in Africa, where immunity sometimes lasted less than 12 months.

MenAfriVac probably would not have become a 50-cents-per-dose reality without the public-private partnership that unfolded, one that veered from the traditional path of licensing to a pharmaceutical or biotech company. It's a glimpse of the future, one that the NIH wants to facilitate. "This case inspired us to put together a template agreement on our website, so other NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] can see what the general outline would be for an agreement like this,” says Ferguson. “That way, they can seriously consider this pathway in terms of meeting their goal as an organization. Particularly for products that don't have an immediate market in Western countries, we have to think differently in terms of commercialization strategies.”

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

A man injured in a car crash was able to eat by mouth for the first time in five months after using Abilex. A woman left without speech for three years after her stroke used Abilex and is now able to swallow and speak.
 
It is the brainchild of Ruth Martin, Professor and Associate Dean for Graduate and Postdoctoral Programs in the Faculty of Health Sciences at Western University in London, Ontario. During her early career as a speech language pathologist in a neuro-rehabilitation clinic, Martin often worked with people who had difficulty swallowing because of strokes, brain injuries or throat and mouth cancers. Therapy was often slow and difficult, with few devices available to retrain both the tongue and the brain that controlled them.
In her later postdoctoral research, Martin worked on the hypothesis that electrical stimulation of the brain could promote swallowing in people who had lost that ability. That’s where her ‘eureka’ moment happened: what if there were an easy-to-use therapy that patients could use to exercise their tongue and jaw, and at the same time help re-wire the ‘swallowing’ parts of their brains?
It had to be lightweight so it wouldn’t overload the jaw; malleable at one end so with little pressure people could get some movement even if they had little muscle control; and have a shape and form that would, without risking their health, help patients stimulate their ‘natural’ ability to wet food into a little ball in their mouths to make it easier to swallow.
It’s this last point that’s key. People with swallowing difficulties often lack the ability to create a swallow-able food ball – sometimes causing them to choke, or aspirate food into their lungs, leading to pneumonia.
Martin’s lab tested several prototypes of various shapes and sizes.  Clinical studies, including functional MRIs at Robarts Research Institute to test the device performance, took place from 2004-09.
WORLDiscoveries, the technology transfer office for Western University, helped Martin secure patents and development funding for the technology and promoted the device to potential licensing partners. In 2009, London-based medical innovator Trudell Medical International picked up the license for the device, which it now makes and markets as Abilex.

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

If Don Jacobs gets his wish, K-12 classrooms soon will be transformed by disruptive and innovative new teaching methods. He also hopes to be part of that change, through his own innovation: web-based systems that offer teachers a searchable curriculum database, resources and professional development — and certainly through the company he helped establish to commercialize the systems, PLS 3^rd Learning.

Becoming an Early Adopter

Jacobs is himself a blend of teacher and techie. When he graduated with a degree in art education from Buffalo State College in 1981, teaching jobs were scarce; the market for personal computers, however, was just emerging. Out of sheer necessity, Jacobs taught himself to use the new technology, which helped him land a position “automating” a New York education service agency.

“That position allowed me to dabble in all areas of the organization, including designing instructional technologies projects,” says Jacobs, who simultaneously completed a doctorate in 1992 at the University at Buffalo (UB) Graduate School of Education of The State University of New York (SUNY) system. “And that led me to want to create a research center at SUNY that focused on using technology to advance K-12 education.”

He went on to establish and direct the Center for Applied Technologies in Education first at Buffalo State College and then at the UB SUNY, from 1995 through 2007.

“We did projects all over the world to advance K-12 education with technologies,” he says.

As the center began focusing on the World Wide Web in the mid 2000s, Jacobs and managing director Paulette Gandel built a web portal to organize New York’s academic learning standards for K-12 with funding from the New York State Department of Education/U.S. Department of Education.

The database, called NYLearns, was first offered for free, and then for a fee to New York school districts, which in turn gave their teachers free access to the web portal.

“We found good resources available through nonprofit organizations and wrote agreements to use those and put them on the web,” says Jacobs. “We were able to put thousands of resources aligned to standards on the site.”

Providing Curriculum Resources

Using NYLearns, a fourth grade math teacher in the Bronx can log on to the web portal and find not only a listing of mathematic concepts students are expected to know by the end of the year, but also sample curricula tied to those academic learning standards.

“There are companies that provide curriculum mapping to inform teachers what has to happen between September and June at every grade level,” says Jacobs. “We also do that, but we add the search feature that makes those standards searchable by grade level, course and subject.”

Over time, the center expanded NYLearns with additional teacher resources, including best practicesand online tools. Using the web portal, English teachers can find time-tested ways to teach the concept of foreshadowing, and math instructors have access to an online whiteboard to show students how moving the parentheses in an order of operations problem changes the calculation.

Arming Teachers With High-Tech Tools

The center staff, which eventually grew to 25 people, equally split between teachers and programmers, also added a point-and-click website builder for teachers to communicate weekly assignments to students and parents and an electronic portfolio tool where instructors can collect ideas and information gleaned from the web.

NYLearns also helps teachers assess how well their teaching methods are working. When the state of New York released 13 years worth of test questions used to assess students — some 30,000 questions — the center attached each question to its academic standard and compiled it all into a searchable database.

“[Using this feature], a teacher can search and find the handful of questions associated with foreshadowing or order of operations and create a practice assessment unit with psychometrically developed questions,” says Jacobs.

Time to Spin Out

After a decade of success with NYLearns — and growing interest in the curriculum and academic standards management system from other states — UB SUNY encouraged Jacobs to consider commercializing the software.

“That launched a conversation with Jeff Dunbar, and then three of us jumped out,” says Jacobs, who was joined in the commercial venture by Michael Horning, Jr., and Robert Daunce.

“It doesn’t happen very often that a faculty member leaves to start an enterprise,” says Jeff Dunbar, director of technology transfer for the UB Office of Science, Technology Transfer and Economic Outreach (STOR). “But Dr. Jacobs was willing because he saw such a great opportunity. He was already running a business within the university; he just had to move it out operationally.”

UB STOR assisted Jacobs’ center with obtaining copyrights and trademarks for its intellectual property, including the database design, portal design and web tools.  In 2007 the technology transfer office also negotiated and executed the license to the new company, which was funded by and became a subsidiary of a private company called Performance Learning Systems (PLS).

“We encouraged Don to work with an attorney but explained the licensing process and milestones and structuring of royalty rates,” says Dunbar.

Initial projects in the company’s pipeline included building a web portal modeled after NYLearns for the state of Pennsylvania called the Standards Aligned System (SAS) and a similar system for the state of Texas now being used by 850 school districts.

Enhancing the Teaching Profession

By accepting sample curricula from teachers, PLS 3^rd Learning is able to continually build content for its portals, while supporting and sharing the work of teachers. Contributions are reviewed by three or more instructors who teach at the same grade level and subject. Submitters receive anonymous feedback and after any necessary tweaking, the sample curriculum goes live.

Although the PLS 3^rd Learning databases contain more than 40,000 teaching items, Jacobs is quick to point out that the real value of each system lies in the teacher’s ability to contextualize the data.

“Google how to measure the circumference of a circle and you’ll get 8 billion hits, the value of which is 0,” says Jacobs. “We contextualize [that information], so that if you’re teaching fourth grade math in the Bronx to bilingual students, you will find methods for teaching circumference that meet your state’s standards. That puts value through the roof.”

A Boost for Buffalo

In just seven years, PLS 3^rd Learning is posting sales of $10.5 million and has grown to a staff of 70, which recently required an expansion of the company’s headquarters in downtown Buffalo.

“Seeing the number of jobs created has been fantastic for Buffalo and its efforts to revitalize,” says Dunbar. “Our licensing fee revenue is just icing on the cake compared to the company’s contribution to the Buffalo economy.”

The company has also been receiving accolades from teachers and administrators using its web portals.

“We have all kinds of really positive feedback, it’s one of the very gratifying things about what we do,” says Jacobs. “After seeing the Pennsylvania web portal, one of the state’s top education policymakers said it made her want to go back into the classroom and teach again.”

In 2012, Jacob’s company merged with PLS and took over management of the parent company, which specialized in professional development.

“Online professional development is a big growth area for us,” says Jacobs.

In addition to providing online courses to educators in Turkey, Switzerland and Portugal, PLS 3^rd Learning has recently partnered with the European Council of International Schools to provide professional development to schoolteachers across Europe. The company is also working with the New York State Council of Superintendents to help NY schools prepare to implement novel teaching methods such as the “flipped classroom,” in which students work independently with online materials and then work with the teacher on interactive exercises during class time.

Jacobs is excited to be playing a role in the evolution from classroom-based learning to anywhere, anytime learning.

“Part of it is providing the websites to help teachers and part is the professional development that provides a conceptual framework to prepare teachers for the shift,” he says. “Having the skills and expertise on a systemic level will determine how fast [school systems] get there.”

The Goal: Blended Learning

When Jacobs started his career, the technologies we all take for granted today had not yet transformed the business world.

“Schools are struggling to catch up,” he says. “The transition is now happening in education, and it’s what we call blended learning — the infusion of technology in the classroom.”

It’s just a matter of time, says Jacobs, before technology is ubiquitous in teaching and learning.

“Eventually, calling it blended learning will be redundant. It will just be learning,” he says.

 

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

If insects had their way, you wouldn’t be able to see the forest or the trees.

Every year bugs, beetles and like-minded pests chomp their way through millions of hectares of forest and farmland, according to Canadian government figures. But with rising concerns about the adverse environmental and health effects of traditional pesticides, a major push is under way to develop more “green” approaches to pest management—and not just in Canada but around the world.

Researchers at Acadia University in Nova Scotia are in the forefront of this movement. The effort is led by biology professor Kirk Hillier, an internationally recognized expert in how insects use naturally produced semiochemicals such as pheromones to communicate with one another. Pheromones can signal alarm, attract prey, repel enemies and lure potential mates.

It’s that last category that interests those working to protect the country’s crops and forests. Hillier’s team and its partners have developed and marketed several products that disrupt the mating behaviours of targeted groups of pests, among them the brown spruce longhorn beetle, the emerald ash borer and the jack pine budworm. These products include traps, lures and sprays to attract, repulse or confuse the intended recipients.

Acadia’s key partners include Forest Protection Limited (FPL), a nonprofit company that operates customized aircraft used for firefighting and aerial surveys in addition to vegetation and pest management. FPL says field trials of sex pheromones and biological insecticides using its state-of-the-art delivery techniques “allow us to optimize low-volume delivery with the maximum benefit to the forest and people.

Other partners include National Resources Canada, the University of New Brunswick and Dalhousie University.

Federal Environment Minister Catherine McKenna said the research “has the potential to create effective and environmentally responsible, pheromone-based products that will be marketed in Canada and internationally.

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This story was originally published in 2018.

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

For those with high blood pressure, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACE inhibitors) are a dream come true. By opening arteries, these drugs lower blood pressure and the resultant strain on the heart.

But it turns out that ACE inhibitors yield other medical benefits as well. Barry Brenner, M.D., of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and Ronald D. Smith, M.D., formerly of Merck & Co., Inc. found that ACE inhibitors can benefit those suffering from diabetic nephropathy.

Diabetic nephropathy is one of the potentially serious complications associated with diabetes, and it stems from uncontrolled high blood sugar. High blood sugar levels can damage nephrons — the miniscule tube-like units that filter fluid and other substances from the blood stream. If left unchecked, diabetic nephropathy can lead to kidney failure.

The scientists discovered that by lowering blood pressure, one could also lower pressure in the glomerulus — the cluster of capillary blood vessels that filter blood in the kidney. As a result, kidney life can be prolonged indefinitely in many patients suffering from diabetic nephropathy. Today, kidney patients around the world are treated with ACE inhibitors.

 

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This story was originally published in 2007.

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

What can help people resist the SARS virus, or protect them from contaminated water and air, or electromagnetic waves? The answer is a highly absorbent material called “PAN-Based Activated Carbon Fabrics” that was invented at Feng Chia University in Taiwan.

The development of this material, discovered by professor Tse-Hao Ko in 1995, was funded in part by the Taiwan National Science Council. It was licensed in 1996 to Taiwan Carbon Technology Co., CCTeks Co. and CeTech Co.

Polyacrylonitrile (PAN)based activated carbon fibers are superior to pitch-based, cellulose-based, and Phenol resin-based activated carbon fibers for mechanical strength and absorbency.

The proprietary process that transforms activated carbon powder to carbon fiber results in a high density of air holes in the carbon fiber, creating higher absorbency. The PAN-based fiber bundles are oxidized first and then activated in a carbon dioxide atmosphere at a temperature of 1,652 degrees Fahrenheit (900 degrees C.)

PAN-based activated fibers can be woven into yarn, thread or cloth. This highly absorbent fabric can be used in a variety of ways, including in disposable respirators, medical protective garments that guard against virus transmission, protective gear for nuclear and biochemical attacks, as well as filters for air and drinking water. 

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

As a kid, James Allison loved to figure out how things worked.

“I wanted to be the first person on the planet to know something before anyone else,” says Allison, who prepared for a life of discovery by pursuing a bachelor’s degree in microbiology and a doctorate in biological sciences.

After 20 years of intense laboratory research studying the body’s immune system, he got his wish.

Using Allison’s pioneering work, the biotechnology company, Medarex, in partnership with Bristol-Myers Squibb, developed Yervoy, the first drug ever shown to significantly improve overall survival for patients with advanced metastatic melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.

Melanoma: Rare but Lethal

Melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer, is caused by uncontrolled growth in pigment-producing skin cells.

Highly curable in the early stages, melanoma can often be surgically removed. However, the disease is more likely than other skin cancers to metastasize, or spread to other parts of the body, making treatment more difficult. In the late stages of metastatic melanoma, the average survival rate is just six months.

According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), melanoma accounts for less than 5 percent of all skin cancer cases, but the vast majority of skin cancer deaths. The ACS estimates that in 2012, 76,250 Americans will be diagnosed with melanoma, and 9,180 will die from the disease.

“Metastatic melanoma is one of the most aggressive forms of cancer and, despite the rising incidence, no new treatments had been approved in more than a decade before Yervoy,” says Sarah Koenig, spokesperson for Bristol-Myers Squibb.

Harnessing the Immune System

Unlike chemotherapy, which treats the tumor directly, Yervoy is part of an emerging class of treatments known as immunotherapy, which harnesses the body’s own immune system to fight tumors.

In a healthy immune system, foreign bacteria and viruses as well as transformed cancer cells bear molecular structures called antigens that identify them to the immune system as dangerous. A type of immune cell called the T-cell plays a key role in the body’s defensive response to these dangers. However, T-cells attack antigen-bearing targets only when given a green light to do so. To prevent the body from attacking its own normal cells, the immune system has a series of checkpoints that operate like traffic lights, sending signals that either activate or inhibit T-cells.

As a professor in the Division of Immunology and director of the Cancer Research Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB), Allison devoted himself to studying the immune response to cancer — and how the disease proliferates by selectively suppressing T-cell activation.

In 1995, he showed that a checkpoint molecule called cytotoxic T lymphocyte antigen-4 (CTLA-4) puts the brakes on T-cell responses. Block CTLA-4, theorized Allison, and the immune system could be activated, unleashing a robust antitumor response. In preclinical experiments, he successfully demonstrated that he could bind a special type of protein called a monoclonal antibody to CTLA-4, preventing it from interfering with T-cell activation.

Finding a Commercial Partner

For help in the patenting process and finding a commercial partner, Allison turned to UCB’s Office of Intellectual Property (IP) and Industry Research Alliances. It turned out to be a long and winding road to commercialization.

“In the early ‘90s, companies were not interested in commercializing IP rights due to lack of what’s known as ‘proof of clinical mechanism,’” says Carol Mimura, Ph.D., assistant vice chancellor, IP and Industry Research Alliances. “As a university without a medical school, we couldn’t advance the opportunity beyond preclinical stages, but we took a risk on pursuing a broad patent portfolio because Dr. Allison convinced us that we had a world-changing opportunity.

“Essentially, we were betting on Dr. Allison and his research team, just as a venture capitalist bets on the management team of a startup company,” explains Mimura.

The technology was originally licensed to NeXstar Pharmaceuticals, which merged with the biopharmaceutical company, Gilead Sciences Inc.  Gilead sublicensed the rights to Medarex, which developed a human monoclonal antibody and began testing in partnership with Bristol-Myers Squibb.  Bristol-Myers Squibb acquired Medarex in 2009.

“Two startup companies took the risk of performing lengthy and expensive R&D [research and development] for more than a decade on an unproven opportunity,” Mimura says of NeXstar and Medarex. “Entrepreneurship and dogged determination resulted in a product that the pharmaceutical industry was able take to the finish line.”

In clinical trials, the antibody — named ipilimumab — added months to the survival rates of patients with advanced melanoma, something no other drug had been able to achieve. Based on the results of a randomized, double-blind Phase III study, the drug was fast-tracked and approved from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in March of 2011.

“Yervoy provided a critical missing piece to the cancer immunotherapy armamentarium and was a game-changer not only for melanoma patients who desperately needed new treatment options, but also for the entire field of cancer immunotherapy,” says Jill O’Donnell-Tormey, Ph.D., CEO and director of scientific affairs for the Cancer Research Institute in New York. “We expect Yervoy and other types of treatments that block the immune system’s ‘off switches’ will potentially help patients with any type of cancer, and if used in combination with cancer vaccines or conventional cancer treatments, could help a much larger percentage of patients.”

Unleashing T-Cells on Cancer

To date, more than 10,000 cancer patients have received Yervoy in clinical trials to treat advanced melanoma and other types of cancer, either alone or in combination with other drugs. Immunotherapy is a key area of focus at Bristol-Myers Squibb, which is also testing the use of Yervoy to treat specific prostate cancers and both small-cell and non-small-cell lung cancer.

“This treatment is unique in that it recruits the immune system to fight the cancer,” says Mimura. “It’s also nonspecific to a given tumor type. Clinical trials are now under way for prostate, breast, lung and other cancers.”

Allison says that unlike other drug therapies, which have short half-lives, T-cells, once activated, stay in the body for decades or maybe even a lifetime.

“One of the reasons so-called miracle drugs don’t work is because they only last in the system a short amount of time, and 85 percent of the time the cancer comes back because you can’t get every cancer cell,” says Allison. “If you try to kill cancer, it’ll beat you every time because it mutates.”

Over the years, Allison has had the opportunity to meet several patients who, thanks to Yervoy, have survived much longer than expected.

 “I met a woman who participated in our very first clinical trial 12 years ago,” he says. “That’s one of the hallmarks of immunotherapy. Once it works, it’s permanent.”

Funding Fundamental Research

Mimura and Allison say the success of Yervoy underscores the importance of conducting and funding basic research.

“Dr. Allison transformed the field of immunology and achieved clinical success by performing basic research on T-cells,” says Mimura. Adds Allison, “It’s satisfying that I could come up with this only by getting under the hood and seeing how things work.”

According to Mimura, both federal dollars — through National Institutes of Health — and later, private funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, played critical roles in Allison’s discovery.

“We hit several valleys between federal grants that could have spelled death for the project,” she says. “A vital $50,000, no-strings-attached grant from Michael Milken’s CaP CURE  (now the Prostate Cancer Foundation) provided Dr. Allison’s laboratory with much-needed bridge funding at a very critical time.”

The tenacity of everyone involved paid off when it came time to negotiate a drug royalty monetization agreement with Bristol-Meyers Squibb: UCB received an upfront payment of $87.5 million — the biggest win to date for the university’s IP office — with the possibility of additional future payments if sales achieve certain pre-specified levels. The university directed funds toward a myriad of scientific research needs, from faculty retention, new biology teaching labs and equipment for the cancer research lab to a new building devoted to stem cell research.

Today, Allison is chair of the Immunology Program at the Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York City, where he is working side by side with physicians to increase the number of patients who respond to Yervoy by combining it with other cancer treatments.

“I believe we can increase survival rates by using cancer treatments that shrink the tumor, and then coming in behind them and taking the brakes off the immune system,” he says. “It’s just a matter of finding the appropriate pairing of therapies.”

Allison’s lifelong quest for new discoveries also continues: He’s currently on the hunt for other molecules that interfere with the body’s natural immune response.

“I’m proud to have turned a scientific finding into something that benefits a lot of people,” he says. “I hope to do it again.”

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This story was originally published in 2012.

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

It might not look like it to peer at the large blades of a wind turbine, but if one vane is misaligned by just five degrees, the resulting energy could blow away millions of dollars. This problem often makes the production of clean electricity still more expensive than producing fossil-fuel energy.

 
As the world faces an ecological crisis and unprecedented economic challenges, Pelletier and his academic supervisor, Souheil-Antoine Tahan from ETS’s Department of Mechanical Engineering, agreed to adapt existing technology to solve this problem. Their research revealed that a wind turbine misaligned by five degrees can cause a 1% energy loss, and the idea of an alignment process to calibrate wind turbine blades caught on.
 
“It must also be robust, feasible and cheap,” Tahan said.

After five years of effort, the researchers invented the first laser wind-vane aligner. This new technology enables wind turbines to be oriented as precisely as possible in the wind direction, enabling energy savings of 1 to 2%; for one 100-megawatt wind farm this powers an additional 200 to 250 homes. The improved precision considerably reduces stress on mechanical components and extends their lifespan. In the future, Francis hopes that wind energy alone will be enough to power all major cities around the world.
 
In 2011, the invention was declared to Aligo Innovation, the outside technology-transfer firm that took the lead to protect the intellectual property and undertake the process of licensing it.
 
It was exclusively licensed to TECHÉOL, a company specializing in technical services for wind farms, to use, manufacture and sell the laser wind-vane alignment system. The technology is now marketed under the name ACUVANE™.

“TECHÉOL is very proud to be the exclusive distributor of this invention, which already allows us to export this service outside Québec, in addition to helping us promote our other services to our customers,” said Evan Mulrooney, Founder and co-owner of TECHÉOL.

Patent Number(s): US: 14,067,206; Canadian: CA 2,832,070; Mexican: MX a,2013,012718

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This story was originally published in 2020.

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

A scientist at the University of Central Florida’s Center for Research and Education in Optics and Lasers (CREOL) in Orlando has invented adaptive lenses that change their light focusing properties in response to stimulus such as electrical current and mechanical pressure. Adjusting the pressure in the lens changes the level of magnification without having to rely on moving, mechanical parts the way standard cameras do.

The first patent application for professor Shin-Tson Wu’s “Adaptive Liquid Crystal Lens” was submitted in 2002. Funding for the research, which has been ongoing for five years, is provided by the U.S. Air Force, the University of Central Florida, and the private sector. Wu’s portfolio of adaptive lens technologies have been licensed by Holochip Corp., in Albuquerque.

Unlike conventional cameras that use mechanical controls to adjust focus, the Adaptive Liquid Crystal Lens uses liquid crystal technology to provide the focus and zoom capability, without the need for moving mechanical parts.

The excitation of the liquid crystal through electrical current works like a LCD monitor in that the electrical current decides the shape of the lens, thus producing the effect of zooming or focusing.  As a second approach, Wu’s fluidic lens uses a transparent fluid encapsulated by a transparent elastic membrane.  Mechanical compression of the fluid causes the membrane surface to bulge, thereby changing its curvature and the focal length of the lens.

The liquid crystal and fluidic lenses are ideal for cell phone cameras and other image-capturing systems, including surveillance equipment for the military. Medical applications are also of interest, such as implantable lenses for eyes, or replacement lenses, that are made from biocompatible materials.

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

Paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia (PSVT) can best be described as an abnormally rapid series of heartbeats that can last anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. It typically surfaces for the first time in childhood or early adulthood, although the first episode may manifest itself at any age, and it is not indicative of an abnormal heart condition.

While the number of people affected by this heart disturbance is not known, its consequences can be serious. Since the heart is beating so rapidly, it cannot rest between beats, and as a result, the heart’s chambers cannot contract sufficiently or become filled with enough blood, leading to inadequate supplies of blood to the body. When this occurs, the patient experiences dizziness and/or breathlessness.

Research conducted at the University of Virginia yielded an effective treatment for PSVT: Adenocard®. By slowing down the heart’s electrical conduction, Adenocard® — an injection-based treatment — in turn slows the heart rate. It was developed by the late Robert M. Berne, M.D., a professor emeritus of physiology, and Luiz Belardinelli, M.D., and was first patented in 1982. Today, Adenocard® is used widely in hospitals and emergency vehicles around the world.

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This story was originally published in 2007.

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

Diagnostic Potentials Ltd., a spin-off from the University of Glasgow, has completed a pivotal clinical trial demonstrating that the ADEPT System can detect Alzheimer’s at an early stage. Coupling dense array EEG with a computer program designed to test patient’s cognitive skills, this technology may revolutionize the way clinicians diagnose a degenerative and highly debilitating disease.

It looks like an elaborate hairnet, or a strange wig of wires, and those who place it on their heads work at a computer terminal. While it sounds like the setup for some kind of virtual reality game, in fact it is not.

Alzheimer’s, a progressive and degenerative disease, continues to stymie clinicians, drain nations’ economies and shatter many lives. Currently, the diagnosis of early stage Alzheimer’s dementia is difficult because affected individuals display symptoms that appear to be part of the normal aging process. Yet it is during the early phase in the disease’s development that an accurate diagnosis would be most beneficial and allow for more effective intervention.

Diagnostic Potentials, located in Glasgow, Scotland, is on track to develop the missing diagnostic tool. A spin-off from the University of Glasgow’s department of psychology, the company has gotten off the ground with the help of funding from United Kingdom government research trust funds. With the completion of the first clinical trial to evaluate its leading technology — the ADEPT system — the founders of Diagnostic Potentials are optimistic.

ADEPT uses EEG (electroencephalogram) to measure the electrical activity of the brain while an individual performs a set of computerized cognitive tasks designed to assess intellectual function. The goal of the technology is to identify differences in the electrical signals in individuals with fully functioning brain activity, and individuals exhibiting early stages of Alzheimer’s. In the latter case, memory function becomes impaired and can be measured through changes in EEG patterns.

Chief scientific officer and co-founder of Diagnostic Potentials, Kerry Kilborn, Ph.D., says this technology is less invasive and claustrophobic than other forms of brain scans presently used to probe for signs of Alzheimer’s. The EEG array sensor net is designed like a spongy hairnet and patients undergoing the test simply place it on their heads. The critical difference between the sensor net used with ADEPT and conventional EEG nets is the number of sensors used to measure brain activity — 128 rather than 12. This provides a tremendous advantage because by covering most of the upper brain, the dense array produces higher resolution maps of electrical fields on the scalp and can better capture brain function.

A Clinician’s Dream

Alan Hughes, M.D., geriatric psychiatrist and honorary senior clinical lecturer at Inverclyde Royal Hospital in Greenock, Scotland, was involved in the first clinical trial of ADEPT. As a clinician who treats elderly patients, he understands the present limitations of diagnosing Alzheimer’s and realizes how essential it is to make the proper diagnosis early in the disease when treatment is more effective.

“The most useful time of diagnosis, from the patients’ point of view, is when they can do the most about their illness — when they can participate in decisions about their treatment, make their wishes known, and discuss them with family members,” says Dr. Hughes.

Technically speaking, Dr. Hughes says the development of this technology is significant because current tools for Alzheimer’s dementia such as computerized axial tomography (CAT) scans simply provide a picture of what the brain looks like at a specific time. An early stage Alzheimer’s brain often looks the same as the brains of individuals affected with other diseases.

“This approach, looking at brain function, allows us to be more accurate and gives us more valuable information,” he says.

Generous Help from the Public and Private Sectors

The transfer of the ADEPT technology from a psychology laboratory at the University of Glasgow initially presented some intellectual and financial challenges according to Professor Kilborn. Commercialization support from the Scottish Biomedical Research Trust and the Department of Trade and Industry for commercial, legal and intellectual property work were the critical components in the 1999 launch of Diagnostic Potentials. The Scottish Technology Fund, along with private investors, helped the founders to raise £384,000 (approximately $618,000 U.S.) to commence the development phase of the company and support three full-time employees.

The fledgling company devoted the next two years to achieving the ADEPT technology’s proof of concept while occupying a small space in the Scottish Enterprise research incubator. They reached their goal and filed for a patent by 2001.

Although buoyed by this breakthrough, the company faced an uphill battle over the next few years.

“We had used most of the funding that was raised by that time,” recalls Professor Kilborn, “so we had to write a new business plan and attract more potential investors for a second round of funding.”

Despite a real turndown in the market at that time, the company persevered and eventually found support from several sources — the Wellcome Trust Fund charity, Scottish Executive, and Scottish Enterprise — totaling over £800,000 (more than $1.3 million U.S.).

Kevin Cullen, Ph.D., director of research and enterprise for the University of Glasgow, points out that Diagnostic Potentials is an excellent example of how long it takes to move good university science out of the lab and into the marketplace.

“The story of Diagnostic Potentials demonstrates the process of university commercialization and how necessary it is to find those little pots of money to keep a project alive at times when the academics are under pressure,” he says. “The process requires a highly motivated, enthusiastic and determined academic in a supportive academic environment to make it work.”

With a second round of funding secured, Professor Kilborn and his colleagues focused on designing a full-scale clinical trial — one that necessitated rebuilding the ADEPT technology and software from the ground up. In the last several years they launched and completed the first multi-site clinical trial involving 148 patients at four different centers across the United Kingdom. Publication of the results is pending, and Professor Kilborn hints that they are promising.

The trials are demonstrating that the ADEPT technology can identify Alzheimer’s disease in cases where it might not be easily diagnosed. Cullen is focusing on the trial’s implications beyond the primary findings and expresses hope that the technology will be capable of mass applications — especially given our society’s aging population.

“The ADEPT approach is creative, and from the commercial perspective, we hope to convince those in the company to look into other markets and explore other applications,” he says.

 

 

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This story was originally published in 2007.

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

A process can go no faster than the slowest step in that process. In urine culture testing, one of the slowest steps takes up to two days to deliver results.

However, scientists at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., have invented an innovative new technology that can reduce this step to hours instead of days, while providing highly accurate results.

Disclosed in 1997, the "QuikiCult Rapid UTI Detection System" detects urinary tract infections much faster by identifying high concentrations of infectious bacteria using light spectrophotometry and automated computer-driven analysis. The research was funded by the university and the private sector.

The QuikiCult System makes it possible to test larger samples, increased protection from contamination, fewer false positives and reduced labor costs for operators.

Because the system is portable and easy to operate, QuikiCult System is ideal for non-laboratory health care settings, including hospitals, doctors’ offices, rural or remote clinics and nursing homes. By operating the system at the point of collection, fresh samples can be tested quickly and provide more accurate results. 

The technology was licensed in 2004 to Maryland-based Macrobionetics, which supplies customized testing equipment for industrial companies and government agencies. The company is selling the QuikiCult System under the name "CultureStat" to health care facilities and reference laboratories across the United States and Canada.

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

Aeroseal, now a division of Carrier Corp., revolutionized the process of searching for, and sealing, hidden leaks in heating and air ducts.

Move over duct tape, a new competitor on the market is getting the job done faster and with more energy savings.

Long thought to be the right solution for stopping leaks around hot or cold air ducts, fabric-backed duct tape fails to seal leaks in ducts and pipes, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.

Instead, Aeroseal duct-sealing technology, invented and developed by the Energy Performance of Buildings Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is making waves for its ability to seal more leakage because of its unconventional method of getting at inaccessible leaks.

The new technology stops the leaks from the inside of the ducts by coating the leaks with tiny sealant particles. The discovery can benefit virtually anyone with a heating and cooling system by offering increased energy savings and comfort.

Mark Modera, Ph.D., inventor and principal investigator for the research group that developed the technology, is also the principal engineer with Carrier Aeroseal. He points out why it’s challenging to maintain a comfortable environment if there are duct leaks.

“You won’t have the same degree of comfort in a two-story home that you’re  trying to cool in summer when you have duct leaks,” he explains. “But the Carrier Aeroseal technology allows more air and cooling upstairs and ultimately provides more comfort.”

Addressing Energy Costs

Viviana Wolinsky, licensing manager at Berkeley Lab says, “Even in the very early stages of the development, we could see that the duct-sealing technology had far-reaching benefits for everyone interested in decreasing energy costs.”

Wolinsky points out that no one wants to pay more for their energy bills than they have to, but when leaky ducts mean you’re paying to heat or cool the air outside your home or office, it’s doubly frustrating.

“The prospect of being able to make homes and commercial buildings more energy efficient by sealing ducts from the inside, and at the same time making interior environments more comfortable, was exciting from a technology standpoint,” she says.

Idea Comes to Life

The first concept for the technology came to Modera in 1987 when it was apparent that the current methods for sealing leaks weren’t effective.

“It’s difficult, often impossible, to seal duct leaks from the outside when the ducts are in inaccessible locations,” says Modera. “When exploring technologies to seal leaks from the inside, I found that sealing leaks in straight pipes is one thing, but too often there are bends and junctions in the ducts and that’s where the problem lies.”

Modera used his skills as a research scientist to gain information about duct sealing. When he saw a newspaper advertisement touting a company’s ability to seal duct leaks, he set up a duct system and invited the company to take a look at it.

“I discovered their method didn‘t seal the system I showed them,” he recalls. “That‘s when I decided that maybe I could design a technology that would seal ducts from the inside.”

Invention Driven by Marketplace Needs

In 1990, the original funding came as part of a multi-year, multi-million dollar Department of Energy (DOE)-sponsored Cooperative Research & Development Agreement between Berkeley Lab and the California Institute for Energy and the Environment, $50,000 of which was for developing duct technology. Subsequent funding of more than $1 million was provided by the Environmental Protection Agency, DOE and the Electric Power Research Institute.

For three years, Modera and a graduate student worked on developing the technology, and in 1993, Modera says, “We figured it out.”

Modera explains how the technology works using the analogy of a car driven at high speeds.

“If a car is driven at 90 miles per hour in the city, it will skid out and crash going around the first sharp turn. Similarly, our technology works by using airborne adhesive particles injected into the ducts so that, when they speed up trying to go through a leak, they ‘pile up’ or ‘crash’ into the sides of the leak and seal it.”

Carrier Seals the Deal

In 1997, the technology was licensed for use in the residential market as well as for small commercial buildings. The logical next step was to create a business so the technology could reach customers who needed it. By 1997, Dr. Modera began spending about half of his time in the lab so that he could devote enough time to starting the company.

The marketing of Aeroseal, which is the name of the company as well as the product, was initially done through franchises primarily sold to heating and cooling dealers.

In 2001, the business was sold to Carrier Corp., which in turn created the subsidiary, Carrier Aeroseal. Two years later the company obtained a license from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for improved nozzles and was able to offer the same product and service to the non-residential market.

Hospital Sees Benefits from Duct Sealing

When Cleveland’s MetroHealth Medical Center hired Karpinski Engineering as a consultant to improve the heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems in its Central Sterilization Department, the firm specified that the Carrier Aeroseal method of duct sealing should be utilized for a portion of existing ductwork on the project.

A previous balance report had shown significant leakage in the hospital’s ductwork in this part of the facility.

“We felt that the Carrier Aeroseal technology would be ideal for this project,” says Nathan Anderson, a project engineer with Karpinski. “The hospital has an exhaust fan on the roof and ductwork that was originally installed in the 1970s. When originally constructed, this ductwork was enclosed in a shaft and after the leakage was revealed, the duct was inaccessible for sealing.”

The first steps involved Modera taking measurements and sealing off the existing exhaust grills, and a sealant was injected from the inside of the ducts.

The technology can block off existing exhaust openings that range from a quarter inch to a half inch in size. The time varies from a few hours to a few days depending on the characteristics of individual heating and cooling systems.

“With Carrier Aeroseal, it’s a computerized, high-tech process,” says Anderson. “Once the openings were blocked off, sealing ducts from the inside took just about 30 minutes.”

The “after sealing” report at the time the project was completed in April 2006, showed about 85 percent of the leakage had been plugged — 1,570 cubic feet per minute (cfm) leakage prior to sealing, 230 cfm leakage after sealing.
 
“By specifying Carrier Aeroseal, we accomplished our goal, which was to improve the exhaust airflow rates,” says Anderson. “If we had not sealed off the ducts from the inside, there would have been significant demolition work involved to accomplish sealing from the outside because of the inaccessibility to the ductwork.”

Meeting the goals of the hospital was paramount for the engineering firm.

“By using this new technology, which has a 10-year warranty, we saved the  hospital time and money,” says Anderson.

The engineering firm is so satisfied with the technology, it has specified Carrier Aeroseal to seal 21 ducts in another significant Cleveland building.

“The technology is simple, easy and relevant to today’s world,” says Wolinsky. “Customers realize a demonstrable payback. When they see how much air is escaping in the before-test when compared to after the ducts are sealed, it’s a powerful visual.”

Between 2003 and 2006 Carrier Aeroseal sealed 20 large buildings ranging from offices to hospitals. The company intends to focus on promoting the technology via a larger launch into commercial markets during 2007 and 2008.

“The driving forces are energy savings and building/system performance improvement,” Modera points out. “During the past four years of accelerated testing, the technology has never failed.”

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This story was originally published in 2007.

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

In the world of academic technology transfer, one contact often leads to another, ultimately resulting in new discoveries that enter the marketplace.

That is the story of Aguru Images, which merged brilliant academic discoveries from universities on opposite sides of the United States — New York University (NYU) and the University of Southern California (USC).

The result is creating a buzz in the computer graphics community because the technology can be used in a variety of applications. They range from making strikingly accurate digital images in motion pictures, videos and computer games to improving renderings by interior, fashion, architectural and industrial designers.

In fact, just about anyone who wants realistic lighting on everything from faces to brushed aluminum to fabrics may be able to benefit from Aguru’s technology.

The Virginia-based company now sells equipment and services and will eventually add software and a library of illumination data to its products. Appropriately, one of the meanings of Aguru in the Sanskrit language is light. Steve Gray, the chief technical officer and executive producer of Vykarian, a Shanghai-based game developer, says Aguru has made a great leap forward.

“It’s pretty remarkable what they’ve done working with NYU and USC,” says Gray, who formerly was the executive producer for Electronic Arts’ “Lord of the Rings” video games.

The Right Mix of Technologies

In the computer graphics world, getting textures right is extremely difficult, Gray points out.

“But along came Aguru, working with NYU, which has a scanner that uses a kaleidoscopic array,” says Gray. “You can stick anything on it and it basically figures out how the light, including light that is being scattered below the surface, is reflected. That’s something.”

Next, in conjunction with USC, he notes, Aguru added a dome that is a three-dimensional scanner.

“It essentially takes pictures simultaneously from many different angles,” Gray explains. “Then, using image-based modeling techniques, allows you to reconstruct a 3-D model of the thing that was inside the dome. One of the first applications was scanning people’s faces and it achieved really, really high resolution. It uses five million polygons, which is essentially more resolution than can be rendered back with film.”

The third component, also from USC, is called the Linear Light Source (the Aguru Scanner). It is a larger type of scanner that captures flat object reflection, the different colors of shine and the surface bumpiness, among other features.

The technologies work together well, Gray says, because the USC dome recreates the subtleties of 3-D shapes and textures for really difficult objects and materials, like the human face, while the NYU and USC scanners capture the properties of countless other materials.

Collaborating With Researchers on Two Coasts

Aguru’s story began in 2005, when Saul Orbach was hired by ANGLE Technology Ventures, a publicly traded British firm, as its entrepreneur in residence. Back then, Orbach knew little about computer graphics, kaleidoscopic technologies, properly illuminating textured surfaces or getting the light right when scenes with real actors are meshed with virtual backgrounds.

Nor did he know that the quest for truly photorealistic digital images had long been the holy grail of the three-dimensional computer graphics industry.

In the past two years, however, he has become something of an expert of sorts in the field of virtual lighting — thanks in large part to researchers at NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies.

Orbach is modest about what he put together.

“I’m no scientist,” says Orbach, a serial entrepreneur. “When I started out, my job was to find technologies that we could commercialize and turn into a company. So I looked at a lot of things.”

Because of his NYU connections — Orbach earned undergraduate and M.B.A. degrees from the university — he met with Robert Fechter, associate director of the NYU Office of Industrial Liaison, who led him to the Courant Institute.

Fechter introduced him to Ken Perlin, a computer science professor, and Jeff Han, a research scientist at Courant. They showed Orbach a variety of computer graphics projects they were working on.

“One was the kaleidoscopic technology that was capturing reflectance data for textured materials,” Orbach says. “This was exciting stuff.

“In fact, it was a ‘Eureka!’ moment,” he said. “The existing methodologies for doing the same thing were very complicated. But Ken had come up with a simple, brilliant device with no moving parts that was quick and easy to operate.

“I like simple, innovative solutions to problems that no one has thought of,” he said. “This was really cool.

“Ken’s device allowed you to capture all angles of illumination. Then you could look them up from his database. His device could capture all those angles in 15 seconds. Learning about that was what started it all.”

Appropriately, Perlin was a fan of kaleidoscopes as a child.

“Wasn’t everyone?” Perlin asks. “As part of my research, I learned that the kaleidoscope was invented by Sir David Brewster in the early 1800s. It was so wildly successful that it became the symbol of science and progress. It was the iPod or computer of its time.”

Prior to this invention, in order to see a surface from multiple points of view you either needed an array of cameras or to mechanically move a single camera to different locations.

“I thought, ‘Why not use a tapered kaleidoscope to do the same thing?’” Perlin recalls. “Then I talked to my colleague Jeff Han and we set about to build it.”

As part of his due diligence, Orbach says he learned everything he could about the industry and the difficulty of getting realistic lighting on computer generated images.

“Along the way, I talked to 50 people and companies who were possible users of this technology. I got a good feel for the market, what the applications were, how much and for what price,” notes Orbach.

Orbach also met with Paul Debevec, a research associate professor at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies Graphics Lab and a friend of Perlin’s who had come up with a complementary technology.

Debevec’s Light Stage 2 process was used by Sony Pictures Image Works to create photorealistic digital actors as part of its Academy Award-winning visual effects in “Spider Man 2,” the Academy Award-nominated visual effects in “Superman Returns,” and most recently “Spider Man 3.”

Debevec, who most recently led the development of a Light Stage dome that measures 26 feet in diameter, says his research began in 1999 and is funded by movie studios and digital imaging corporations. The institute’s basic research funding came from the U.S. Army.

“The goal of our institute is to foster collaboration between academic researchers and the entertainment industry to develop the next generation of simulation and virtual environments,” Debevec explains.

“With Aguru commercializing some of our technologies and pushing them further forward, that will help meet these goals,” he says. “It will allow more people to benefit from these physically based rendering and realistic model acquisition techniques. Aguru is going to take proven technologies, make them more robust, more economical and will adapt and evolve them to better meet the specific needs of the industry. And that will inspire our group to work on the next generation of these technologies.”

Making Its Marketplace Debut

Aguru Images was launched in March 2007 with an initial $1 million in financing from ANGLE. NYU licensed its technology to Aguru in exchange for equity and revenue. USC negotiated a similar deal.

By August 2007, Aguru was ready to show its products at the 2007 SIGGRAPH trade show in San Diego. (SIGGRAPH stands for Special Interest Group for Graphics and Interactive Techniques.)

John Sweet, a senior licensing associate at USC’s Stevens Institute for Technology Commercialization, calls working with Aguru Images a “pleasure.”

“Saul Orbach is an experienced entrepreneur and has assembled a good group of guys,” he says. “It’s nice to collaborate with people like that who know what they are doing.”

Orbach estimates the company will have revenues of between $5 to $7 million in 2008. And after that, who knows?

“As for future applications, we quickly came up with a short list of 15 or 16 that includes online commerce, cosmetics, catalog shopping, medical applications and even military stuff,” says Orbach.

“There is no shortage of how this technology could be used,” he muses. “The sky’s the limit.” 

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This story was originally published in 2008.

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

The groundbreaking intelligent tutoring system developed at the University of California, Irvine, equalizes educational opportunities because it knows exactly what the student knows and what the student is ready to learn.

“Alan,” a student at Hilltop Middle School in Chula Vista, Calif., knows firsthand that when it comes to learning, one size doesn’t fit all.

He was getting Ds and Fs on his seventh-grade report card when his father called Gary Oakland, a teacher at his school, saying he didn’t know how to help his son.

Over the past five years, Oakland has had great success with ALEKS (Assessment and LEarning in Knowledge Spaces), a groundbreaking technology developed at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) in the mid-1990s. The revolutionary artificial intelligence technology, now used by hundreds of thousands of students in more than 1,000 schools, was developed by Jean Claude Falmagne, Ph.D., chairman and founder of ALEKS and emeritus professor of cognitive science at the University of California, Irvine, along with and a team of researchers.

Oakland suggested Alan try working with ALEKS. Using his home computer, Alan started getting excited about learning. Pretty soon he finished 100 percent of the state’s standard Grade 7 math requirements. Oakland, who has trained all of the math teachers and math department heads in his school district on ALEKS, says, “Over this past summer, Alan, who is now in eighth grade, completed 85 percent of an algebra course all on his own without ever spending a day in an algebra class.”

ALEKS has revolutionized learning because it interacts with students at a highly individual level of readiness instead of teaching to the “fat part of the curve.” Subjects such as math, chemistry and accounting, have been traditionally taught in a linear method — in a start-to-finish sequence.

“But the reality is not everyone learns at the same pace, and not everyone can afford a tutor,” Oakland says. “You should be able to achieve success by teaching in a logical, sequential manner, but it doesn’t work that way. Everyone learns differently.”

ALEKS Unveiled

In 1993, Falmagne says researchers at UCI received a “lucky break.”

“We received a $2.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop the software that would become ALEKS,” he explains.

The technology is based on Knowledge Space Theory, a milestone in cognitive  psychology and applied mathematics. Its origin goes back to the early 1980s when Falmagne, along with Dr. Jean-Paul Doignon of the Free University of Brussels in Belgium, and scientists at New York University and other universities, began to develop Knowledge Space Theory.

“Knowledge Space Theory is not only about finding out what someone knows, but that knowledge acquisition takes place in a ‘learning space,’” says Falmagne who notes the extremely complex software took 10 years and millions of lines of code to create.

In 1997, the UCI Office of Technology Alliances licensed the technology to ALEKS Corp. Two years later, McGraw-Hill became the distributor of ALEKS in higher education.

“In 1999, our first commercial products of Basic Math and Beginning Algebra for two-year colleges got off the ground,” notes Falmagne. “Our partnership with McGraw-Hill has also allowed us to develop many other products.”

Classroom Dynamics

From the moment the computer screen lights up, ALEKS takes students on a rewarding journey. The technology can be used for independent learning — students can get ahead on their own by accessing ALEKS from any computer or the software can be used for specific courses as well as in school computer labs.

In November 2006, Oakland made a presentation to the California Math Council showing how ALEKS can help students with varying scholastic aptitudes succeed beyond their wildest dreams.

Oakland’s school, located about 15 miles from Mexico, has a student population that is about 75 percent Hispanic.

ALEKS is fully bilingual in Spanish and English for math through Grade 9, with instantaneous “one click” translation.

In 2001, when the school received a flyer about ALEKS, Oakland was teaching an after-school algebra recovery program to seventh- and eighth-grade students (to help them “recover” their grades from failing the class the year before).

“The students have to make up 60 hours to repeat or ‘recover’ a class,” Oakland says. “Some of our students weren’t even coming to school.”

On top of failing grades, he says behavioral issues created a nightmare atmosphere for both students and teachers. But there was hope in the form of ALEKS.

“The more they use ALEKS, the more apt they are to get good grades,” Oakland comments. “When they get their first ‘A’ it’s a heady experience — there’s no stopping them.”

“First off, ALEKS does an assessment to determine precisely which topics the student has already mastered,” says R.G. Wilmot Lampros, president of ALEKS Corp., Tustin, Calif. “ALEKS avoids multiple choice questions. There are no lucky guesses — it’s not geared to finding out how good a test taker a person is. The student has to know how to solve a problem.”

Oakland’s school didn’t have a computer lab, but he was determined to build one so his students could use ALEKS. Oakland, along with an information technology staffer from the school, brought in 60 old computers that didn’t work.

“Together we repaired and rebuilt the computers, bought inexpensive keyboards, and repaired tables and chairs,” he recalls. “In the end we had our computer lab complete with 34 computers.”

Oakland saw positive results from ALEKS from the start. He willingly made the long drive from the mountains where he lives to teach the algebra recovery classes on weekends and during the summer in addition to after school classes, which are now math support classes.

Lampros notes that ALEKS was not developed around the idea of using technology to maximize high-end graphics.

“That’s one of the reasons why ALEKS’ success is so fascinating,” he says. “We use graphics where they are pedagogically useful. Students fall in love with ALEKS not because of its visuals, but because using it enables them to learn and excel.” They also see an immediate assessment of what they know and how to do a problem right.

“They tell me they love ‘seeing’ what they know,” says Oakland, referring to the program’s popular pie chart feature. “When students click on it, ALEKS shows them not only what they can do but, what they are ready to do next. They love seeing where their knowledge is growing.”

Learning Comes Alive

Harold Baker, Ph.D., director of customer support, has been with ALEKS since before it became a commercial product. From early on, he recalls a vivid image of how ALEKS makes math come alive.

“A student with developmental disabilities was sitting at her computer at a community college unable to type like other students, but she was so caught up in learning math from ALEKS, that she used her pencil’s eraser to enter numbers and letters from her keyboard,” he says.

What ALEKS is not, he says, is a program that just gives more homework online.

“There are possibilities for deep customization with ALEKS — it has many features tomake sure teachers are successful as well as students,” he says.

“Studies have shown that early failure in math, particularly in Algebra 1 and 2 is often a predictor of failures in other disciplines,” say Baker. “If a student has failed before, he will likely fail again. ALEKS breaks the cycle of repeated failure.”

ALEKS offers another classroom benefit. It frees up teacher time and allows teachers to spend more time with individual students (or small groups) and do more creative things. “Instead of just teaching math and other subjects, teachers can have fun teaching students the applications of math such as how math is used in building bridges,” notes Baker.

What’s next for ALEKS? The company will launch an elementary chemistry program in early 2007. Recently, a study by researchers at the University of Memphis, showing how an ALEKS statistics program can eliminate racial disparities, was accepted by the American Educational Research Association for presentation at its annual meeting.

Summing up why students like ALEKS, Falmagne says, “It talks directly to them, and it always rewards their time and effort.”

While ALEKS has made a difference in many students’ lives, more will benefit in the future. “The potential for success for students throughout the world is unlimited,” says Baker. “ALEKS is an intelligent tutoring system that really works.”

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This story was originally published in 2007.

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

The brimstone butterfly adorns the business cards of Edward C. Taylor, Ph.D. A fitting homage to his life’s work, the butterfly symbolizes Taylor’s inspiration to develop the anticancer drug Alimta (pemetrexed).

Alimta is currently approved in the United States to treat recurrent, or second-line, non-small cell lung cancer, the most common form of lung cancer. It is also approved in combination with another drug called cisplatin for the treatment of malignant pleural mesothelioma, a cancer often associated with exposure to asbestos.

The development of Alimta dates back to 1946 when Taylor, now a retired distinguished professor and organic chemist at Princeton University in Princeton, N.J., entered graduate school and was looking for a thesis topic. He came across an article describing the discovery of a compound found in human liver that, bizarrely, possessed a structure of which a portion was identical to the structure of pigments in the wings of butterflies. Taylor’s curiosity about this unexpected discovery eventually led him to make a major advancement in the fight against cancer.

The compound from the liver was later determined to be folic acid, a vitamin that plays an essential role in making cell division possible. “It was found that folic acid is essential for all forms of life,” says Taylor.

It was then he saw the potential for an anticancer agent. Like all cells, tumor cells need folic acid, or folates, to divide and multiply, allowing the tumor to grow. “If you could inhibit it, you would have a good way of arresting the growth of tumors,” he says. “The challenge was to inhibit the growth of the tumor and not healthy human cells. People tried for years, but no one succeeded.”

Trust is Essential to Success

In the 1970s Taylor resumed work on an antifolic agent that might selectively target tumor cells. After years of work, he came up with a promising compound called Dideazatetrahydrolic acid (DDATHF). But he knew his work could only be carried so far at Princeton, and he needed help. “I needed facilities and expertise that Princeton didn’t have,” he says. “If I wanted this compound thoroughly looked at, who would do it?”

Taylor enlisted the help of Eli Lilly and Co. in Indianapolis. At the time, Taylor had already been consulting with Lilly for years, and had established close relationships with the company, so in the early 1980s he sent DDATHF to them.

Knowing they might be on the brink of a major breakthrough, Taylor (through Princeton) and Lilly in the mid-1980s set up a collaborative effort to explore the potential of what appeared to be an extremely promising new area of cancer research. During the following four years, approximately 800 new drug candidates were synthesized and evaluated through this collaboration. DDATHF, the original lead, eventually failed clinically because of toxicity, but another compound finally emerged that proved to be the compound of choice for development, and that compound became the drug named Alimta®.

This was also a pioneering time for technology transfer at Princeton.

By this time, Princeton had a well organized technology transfer arm, but at the time of the project’s initiation, the partnership was forged out of mutual trust.

The Princeton-Lilly joint research project that culminated in the discovery of Alimta“was the first big collaboration that Princeton had undertaken, and it proved to be a major success because there was complete trust and integrity on both sides,” according to Taylor.

Partnership, Perseverance Overcome Obstacles

As a pharmaceutical company, Lilly focused on understanding how the compounds behaved in humans. “Our role was to conduct evaluations and animal studies to determine which compounds were candidates for clinical trial,” says Joe Shih, Ph.D., a distinguished research fellow at Lilly.

A key part of Lilly’s role was to understand the compounds’ toxicity in humans and how to mitigate it. That turned out to be a crucial element.

Early clinical trials with Alimta® were plagued by unpredictable toxicity issues. Although the majority of patients in the trials responded well, some experienced serious, life threatening side effects. While the drug’s clinical benefits were clear, these problems threatened to end the project. That’s when another member of Lilly’s team saved the project.

Clet Niyikiza, Ph.D., at the time a statistician and mathematician with Lilly, stepped forward to solve the problem. “He said, ‘Give me three weeks,’” recalls Taylor, “and he would solve the problem.”

Scouring the clinical data to find the common thread among patients who experienced the side effects, Niyikiza, determined that the patients who experienced side effects had a pre-existing folic acid deficiency. Researchers had not anticipated this problem, since they were attempting to inhibit folic acid activity. But Niyikiza’s work led to changing the protocol to co-administering folic acid and vitamin B-12 to patients, and this amended treatment saved the drug.

“It tipped the balance critically,” says Taylor.

“Alimta is a single compound that targets the utilization of many folate based processes essential for the growth of tumor cells,” Taylor explains. “Other cancer drugs usually can target only one specific biological process, making it attractive for patients to receive a ‘cocktail’ of several drugs. But this strategy also means that the patient is subject to the combined toxicities of each component of this cocktail.

“Since Alimta is a single drug that has multiple targets, it is harder for tumors to develop resistance to it,” he continues. “That is part of the reason Alimta is one of the least toxic cancer drugs known.”

Since its approval in the U.S., Alimta has gone on to be approved by regulatory authorities in more than 85 countries. Unlike most chemotherapy treatments for cancer, Alimta is easy to administer, requiring only a 10-minute infusion every three weeks.

Collaboration is the Cornerstone

Alimta’s development is the result of decades of work and partnership between Taylor and the research team at Lilly, without which the drug would have never made it to initial trials.

“The attrition rate in drug development is enormous,” says Taylor, citing that only one out of every 5,000 to 10,000 potential candidates ever becomes a drug. “It’s a discouraging and extraordinarily expensive process.”

He added that Lilly’s agreement to collaborate with Princeton, and to help develop the drug, demonstrated Lilly’s trust in Taylor and in the promise the early compounds held.

From Taylor’s perspective, the partnership with Lilly and its evaluations of drug candidates, gave him, as well as his Lilly colleagues, the feedback needed to continue research in the direction that eventually led to the discovery of Alimta.

“In drug development, you have to evaluate constantly what you are making so you don’t go in the wrong direction,” he explains. “Such feedback is not available in an organic synthesis lab.”

It was the willingness of Lilly to perform extensive biological testing that made Alimta possible.

Shih views the development of Alimta as a model of how a pharmaceutical company and a university can work together.

“The science is being conducted all over the world at top research institutions like Princeton,” he says. “Big pharmaceutical companies don’t have the resources to conduct research at that scale. These institutions help us to identify interesting discoveries that can lead to new drugs.”

Lilly is working with many institutions worldwide in the research and development of drugs for oncology, diabetes and neuroscience.

Summing up the importance of partnerships between research institutions and the private sector, Shih comments, “Collaboration is a cornerstone of this process.”

Taylor says Lilly’s help was invaluable. “Without this kind of collaboration, Alimta would still be a curious compound sitting on a shelf in my lab.” 

 

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This story was originally published in 2008.

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

When Georgetown University’s Raymond Woosley discovered fexofenadine’s role as a safe and effective allergy medicine – you know it as Allegra – he didn’t realize it would transform the science of drug development. Today, Allegra is one of the most popular antihistamines in the world, restoring an otherwise unattainable quality of life for serious allergy sufferers.

Woosley, the chairman of pharmacology at Georgetown University Medical Center, was part of the scientific team called-in to investigate problems occurring with Seldane (terfenadine), a drug introduced to the market in 1985 as the first “non-drowsy” allergy medicine. He found previously overlooked reports of arrhythmias and deaths that suggested an interaction between Seldane and other common drugs could cause serious heart rhythm disorders, sometimes leading to sudden death.

It was during his research that Woosley discovered that a breakdown product of Seldane—fexofenadine—was the actual ingredient that suppressed allergy symptoms, with no serious side effects.

Woosley’s work transformed the drug development process at an international level. Based on his studies, the FDA and other regulatory agencies published guidelines requiring testing of new drugs for their potential to cause heart arrhythmias. These guidelines are essentially the same tests and protocols that Woosley conducted on terfenadine.

With the help of Georgetown University’s Office of Technology Commercialization, Woosley went on to patent fexofenadine as a non-toxic allergy medicine. OCT played a critical role in the deal, managing key language in the development agreement.

Following its approved by the FDA in 1996, the drug was commercialized and marketed as Allegra by Sanofi-Aventi. Shortly afterward the FDA pulled terfenadine from the market, soon followed by over a dozen other medications that were found to pose similar risks.

The FDA approved over-the-counter (OTC) sales of Allegra in 2011. In 2016 Allegra totaled $221.6 million in OTC sales, placing it among the top-five-selling OTC allergy medicines in the U.S..
 
Allegra aside, Woosley’s work transformed the drug development process at an international level.
Based on his studies, the FDA and other regulatory agencies published guidelines requiring testing of new drugs for their potential to cause heart arrhythmias. These guidelines are essentially the same tests and protocols that Woosley conducted on terfenadine and are now required for almost all new drugs being developed today.

Woosley has continued his mission to make drugs safer. He is founding president of the Arizona Center for Education and Research on Therapeutics, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the safe use of medications. The center analyzes evidence and maintains lists of drugs that are categorized according to their risk of causing dangerous cardiac arrhythmias. This information is accessed online by thousands of researchers and healthcare providers every year.

"Patients are dying needlessly from drugs and drug combinations that are often taken to treat common, relatively trivial illnesses,” said Woosley. “Although these kinds of side effects resulting in death are rare, they are preventable and even one death is unacceptable."

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This story was originally published in 2018.

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

Worldwide, about 30 million people require a prosthetic device to walk, yet only 10 percent of those individuals have access to the devices. Prosthetic devices available in developing countries are often rudimentary and do not offer the functionality of advanced prostheses, which can cost up to $50,000.

Inventor Jan Andrysek, Ph.D., a scientist at Bloorview Research Institute at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital and an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, has created a more affordable solution for individuals for whom advanced prosthetics are out of reach.

The All-Terrain Knee is an innovative, mechanical prosthetic knee joint that is stable, durable and waterproof. The invention includes a proprietary stance-phase control mechanism (the AutoLock) and a swing-phase control mechanism that allows the knee to securely lock itself without impeding natural movement. The prosthetic knee is easy to fit and maintain, and can be used in harsh environments.

Andrysek established partnerships with rehabilitation centres to develop fitting procedures and teamed with the International Committee of the Red Cross to conduct clinical studies with the All-Terrain Knee. The inventor says the study results provide strong empirical evidence that the device provides users with a greater feeling of security and a reduction in falls.

In 2014, the technology was licensed to LegWorks Inc., a for-profit social enterprise established to commercialize the artificial knee joint. Today, the company offers four versions of the All-Terrain Knee with various features appropriate for different users, from sedentary to more athletic patients. LegWorks has reached patients in 28 countries, tiering its pricing to help reach underserved patient populations.

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This story was originally published in 2016.

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

Severe blood loss is one of the leading causes of death in traumatic injury cases. Despite the abundant research that exists on ways to stop surface bleeding (hemostasis), little work has been done to develop special materials that can be applied to wounds to staunch bleeding. This is especially critical in combat casualty care, where control of non-compressible bleeding is one of the biggest unmet needs in military emergency medicine. Blood loss through gauze dressings is a major factor in the death of wounded soldiers on the battlefield.

To reduce death and injury from substantial blood loss, a joint research team from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., developed a technology consisting of a fabric of woven specialty fibers, including glass, silk, bamboo, cotton, flax, hemp and zeolite. Additional co-factors such as thrombin, RL platelets, RL blood cells, fibrin, fibrinogen, and other hemostatic agents can be  incorporated into the textile. The fabric is soft, strong, and absorbent, can be cut to any needed size or shape, is temperature-stable, and may be used to support other hemorrhage-control methods.

This technology was licensed to Entegrion, a University of North Carolina startup company. In 2007 Entegrion received Food and Drug Administration approval for its hemostatic textile technology called Stasilon™. AlphaBandage™, the company’s emergency bandage that promotes blood coagulation and reduces bleeding, was distributed to battlefield medics and performed well during pilot testing.

The product has demonstrated the ability to reduce blood loss as compared with gauze by improving rates of clot formation. Entegrion is developing other wound-dressing products for military and commercial markets in the United States.

 

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This story was originally published in 2008.

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

A fortuitous discovery of a molecule that can differentiate between normal and abnormal levels of brain cells that bear dopamine transporters may hold the key to more accurate and early diagnoses of Parkinson’s disease and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. 

Imagine waking up one morning with a sudden and unexplained twitch in your little finger. Too persistent to ignore, you go to your general practitioner where you learn that you may have some kind of movement disorder. The twitches, tremors and shakes may not go away — in fact they may get worse. Even scarier, there is a good chance that your condition will be misdiagnosed, and the treatment you really need is not necessarily the one that will be prescribed. 

Welcome to the frustrating world of movement disorders. Doctors who treat patients with these symptoms face this conundrum every day. Patients with Parkinson’s Disease — a highly debilitating neurodegenerative disease — as well as patients with other disorders that appear to be the same thing but are actually of a very different etiology suffer because of a lack of accurate and reliable diagnostic tools.

“There has been a crying need for a long time now for earlier and more accurate diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease,” says Ken Rice, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Boston Life Sciences Inc., a Boston-area company that is playing a huge role in helping to solve this problem. Research into the progression of Parkinson’s disease has shown that by the time a patient is symptomatic, 70 to 80 percent of the neurons that control movement in the substantianigra part of their brain have died. Because there is no cure for the disease, all that is available to patients and their families is a plan for managing the symptoms — and even this phase is relatively short. “That is why earlier detection and intervention of PD can make a big difference,” Rice says. “It would allow for an extension of the symptom management phase and translate into better quality of life for patients.” 

Understanding Diseases on a Molecular Level

That’s where Altropane®, a highly specific imaging agent presently undergoing evaluation in Phase III clinical trials, comes in. The groundwork for Altropane® was laid in the late 1980s, when Bertha Madras, Ph.D., professor of psychobiology at Harvard University, was researching the action of cocaine in the brain. Madras fortuitously discovered that a certain molecule, by virtue of selectively binding to a protein — the dopamine transporter — could accurately differentiate between particular cells in the brain. A somewhat simple concept, but the information it revealed was quite powerful. “I’ll never forget that moment,” Madras recalls. “When the lab technician showed me the results of the experiment, I nearly fell off my seat. I immediately realized the impact of these results, and it sent off a cascade of ideas in my mind.” 

This binding molecule, called a tropane, was the first to accurately identify neurons in the brain that bear dopamine transporters, specialized  proteins that transport the chemical dopamine into cells. Neurons that don’t have dopamine transporters on their cell surface were clearly and cleanly ignored when introduced to the tropane. The implication for Parkinson’s patients is that those with the disease have very low levels of dopamine transporter-producing cells; they mysteriously die off. So, the brains of Parkinson’s patients, compared with normal brains, as well as those with non-Parkinson’s movement disorders like essential tremor, look very different when put to this test. 

The clinical application of this discovery involved joining forces with a team of chemists who specialize in modifying molecules to make them imaging agents, or proteins that become detectable by nuclear medicine tests such as positron emission tomography, or PET, scans. Collaboration with fellow Harvard scientist, chemist and inventor David Elmelah, Ph.D., helped to overcome this hurdle, and the team was ready to find a partner to support product development. They enlisted the expertise of Peter Meltzer, Ph.D., scientist and president of Organix in nearby Woburn, Mass., and the collaboration between academic and industry science led to the further development of Altropane®. 

The final version of Altropane® includes a radioactive label (Iodine-123), enabling its visualization by clinicians in live humans when imaged by single photon emission computed tomography, or SPECT. SPECT imaging is more widely available and less expensive than conventional PET scans, making it accessible to most hospitals with nuclear medicine departments. Moreover, SPECT can provide imaging of Altropane® almost immediately after it is injected, enabling quick and accurate diagnoses. 

Early Diagnosis Can Slow Progression of Disease

The technology transfer office at Harvard University worked with the scientists as they recognized the potential of Altropane®, and Boston Life Sciences, headquartered in Hopkinton, Mass., acquired the rights to develop, manufacture and commercialize the agent. Following the completion of several large earlystage trials, Altropane® is now in pivotal Phase III trials specifically designed to test the molecule’s ability to differentiate between Parkinson’s Disease and other non-Parkinsonian movement disorders manifested by shaking and tremors. 

“We’re very excited about Altropane® and its promise in reducing the high error rate associated with the diagnosis of PD and other movement disorders,” says Rice of Boston Life Sciences. The company is very committed to bringing the product to market and has made a substantial investment in the clinical development of Altropane®. “First and foremost, the Parkinson’s community is a very dedicated group of people who want nothing more than to find a cure,” Rice says. “Anything we can do to help alleviate the uncertainty by providing a more accurate tool for diagnosis is hugely important.”

Clinicians who diagnose and treat Parkinson’s patients say Altropane® could have a significant impact. “In terms of a patient’s quality of life, it is so important to get the appropriate medicine early on,” says Burton Scott, Ph.D., M.D., associate clinical professor in medicine and neurology at the Movement Disorders Center at Duke University Medical Center. “We want to eventually use neuroprotective drugs for those patients who are susceptible to PD. That goal has been the Holy Grail in PD research for quite some time. In the foreseeable future, when we have effective therapies that can slow down the progression of PD — and I’m confident that they will be forthcoming — the correct diagnosis of the disorder will be even more critical.”

The acceptance of Altropane® also promises a more widespread means of identifying and diagnosing Parkinson’s Disease patients so that they receive adequate treatment earlier. “Altropane® allows more clinicians to make an accurate diagnosis without requiring movement disorder specialists,” says Alan Fischman, M.D., director of nuclear medicine at the Massachusetts General Hospital and an investigator involved in clinical trials of Altropane® in Parkinson’s Disease patients. “By allowing doctors who are not necessarily experts in the field of movement disorders to make a definitive diagnosis, it moves the treatment out of major academic centers and out into the community. Because of this, Altropane® can significantly augment the field.”

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, is another highly prevalent medical problem characterized by abnormal levels of dopamine transporter-producing neurons in the brain. Like Parkinson’s Disease, the level of dopamine transporters in the brains of ADHD individuals differs from those without the disorder. In the case of ADHD however, dopamine transporters levels are elevated, not reduced. Boston Life Sciences is now sponsoring Clinical trials to test the accuracy of Altropane® in diagnosing this disorder.

ADHD, which affects more than 5 million children in the United States and as many as 2 to 4 percent of adults, has been a controversial medical issue because of inconsistencies in the clinical diagnosis and concern about the reported abuse of behavior-modifying medications for the disorder.

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This story was originally published in 2006.

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

Each year, more than 3 million children around the world die of diarrhea and other gastrointestinal ailments, primarily in developing countries.

Scientists at the University of Virginia (U.Va.) and TechLab, a medical diagnostic manufacturer based in Blacksburg, Va., are working together to make a dent in the disease and, if all goes well, come up with a vaccine against amebiasis, or amebic dysentery.

The story begins in 1989, when Dr. William Petri, a trombone-playing researcher at U.Va. received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to study a protein on the surface of Entamoeba histolytica, a parasite that causes dysentery. Petri is the chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and International Health at U.Va. in Charlottesville.

With the help of colleague and longtime friend, Dr. Barbara Mann, they were able to successfully clone the surface protein so it could be used to develop antibodies that would result in an accurate diagnostic test. This test, which has been cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), identifies the E. histolytica organism in children and adults suffering from diarrhea and dysentery. It was licensed by the U.Va. Patent Foundation to TechLab in 1992.

The company is now collaborating with Petri to develop a low-cost dipstick-like device similar to a home pregnancy test that changes color when used to analyze infected fecal matter. The dipstick, which is being tested in Bangladesh, uses TechLab’s diagnostic technology. But it will deliver it in a simpler form, Petri says.

Providing such a low-cost kit would allow the most impoverished nations to have greater access to the technology, thereby allowing for proper diagnosis and treatment of dysentery.

Petri says he believes FDA clearance of the dipstick test may occur by the end of 2008. The current form of the test is a bit more complicated, but can also be used in the field, he says.

Debi Hudgens, a licensing associate at the U.Va. Patent Foundation, calls the collaboration between her school and TechLab “extremely productive.”

Joel Herbein, who heads TechLab’s parasitology section, says working with Petri is important because he has collaborators all over the world and can set up clinical evaluations in places where gastrointestinal diseases are endemic.

“We want our products to be used in very simple settings to diagnose disease without a lot of supplemental expensive equipment,” says Herbein, who earned his Ph.D. in cell biology from Duke University in Durham, N.C.

“There is always a push for these tests to become simpler and cheaper, faster to run and more sensitive.”

TechLab came into being in 1989, when it was spun out of the Virginia Tech Anaerobe Laboratory in Blacksburg, Va. It was founded by microbiologists Tracy Wilkins and David Lyerly, whose work had focused on Clostridium difficile, a bacteria that can also cause gastrointestinal illnesses. The company now has 72 employees and more than 15 products on the market, including the E. histolytica test. Lyerly said TechLab is always trying to push basic research to improve its products.

“We go to the top institutions in the country,” he says. “That’s why we started the collaboration with U.Va., because it is a top-notch university doing work that dovetails perfectly with what we do here.”

A Chance Meeting Leads to Collaboration

Petri and Wilkins crossed paths in 1992 when Petri made a presentation at an American Society of Microbiology chapter meeting held at Virginia Tech.

“Very fortunately for me, Tracy happened to be there,” says Petri. “The presentation was about our attempts to make a better diagnostic test for amebiasis. We’d had some limited success doing that, but Tracy and his company were and still are today, the world’s experts in how to make diagnostic tests for intestinal infectious diseases.”

The pair spoke during the meeting and decided to work together.

“There were no research grants or anything,” he recalls. “We agreed to take some of the antibodies that we had made against this parasite and turn it into a diagnostic test that would work and could pass muster at the FDA.”

Petri calls the importance of the collaboration between the two “enormous for the field of tropical medicine and amebiasis. There still is no other diagnostic test specifically for E. histolytica. Since then, it has gone through three generations of FDA approval, with each one better than the last generation.”

Petri says the importance of the collaboration goes well beyond simply having a good diagnostic test.

“We have been able since 1999 to work with a cohort of 500 children in Dhaka, Bangladesh, who have been monitored every other day for diarrheal illness,” he says. “With their tests, we have been able to quickly ascertain when the children have diarrhea if it is due to amebiasis, which often leads to malnutrition. And malnutrition in turn is the most common cause of death in children in the developing world.”

Before there was a good diagnostic test for amebiasis, Petri says no one knew how common it was or if those who had it were resistant to being reinfected.

“A number of very fundamental questions were unresolved,” he says. “If you don’t have a good way of reliably diagnosing an infection, there is no way to study it in humans. All this was made possible by the TechLab test.”

Petri and his colleagues in Bangladesh learned that amebiasis is quite common in the children they are following.

“About 40 percent of Bangladeshi children we are following are infected with this parasite every year,” he says. “We also discovered that the infection is linked to malnutrition. So if you are malnourished, you are four times more likely to become infected.”

Hope for a Vaccine

Petri and his team learned that when the body creates antibodies against this parasite, reinfection is less likely. In other words, they discovered that these intestinal antibodies can lead to immunity to the infection.

“We can use this information to try to rationally develop a vaccine against the infection,” he says. “All because of the TechLab test. Without that, none of this work would have gone forward. This has been the perfect collaboration where both parties benefit equally. This has been win-win from the very beginning.”

Petri said his current work with TechLab is being supported by the National Institutes of Health through cooperative research agreements that are part of the Vaccine Initiative and with Small Business Technology Transfer program funding.

But the work Petri is most devoted to is the amebiasis vaccine.

Petri said he believes the vaccine will be tested on humans by 2011.

“If I can help achieve a vaccine against amebiasis, I will be overjoyed,” he says. “That will be a huge accomplishment by many people working together.”

“The biggest winners, I think, are going to be children in the developing world,” he says.

What we have discovered so far from this work is the contribution of cryptosporidiosis, amebiasis and giardiasis to malnutrition. Having a better way of diagnosing means you have a better way of treating it to try to help prevent malnutrition.

“And it’s malnutrition that makes children so susceptible to the other diseases like pneumonia that kill so many of them around the globe.” 

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This story was originally published in 2008.

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

What do nuclear submarines and petrochemical plants have in common?

Both use ammonia.

Ben Schafer learned about this colorless, pungent gas during a stint as a submariner — or “bubble head” — in the U.S. Navy. Gerardine Botte, an associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio

University in Athens, became familiar with it from her studies and while working in her native Venezuela.

The two ended up putting their heads together after attending a Denver meeting of the Electrochemical Society in December 2005. Botte was there representing her university’s Russ College of Engineering and Technology, while Schafer was attending on behalf of his company, the Hydra Fuel Cell Corp.

The result — less than two years later — was a collaborative private sector-university partnership to develop inexpensive hydrogen from ammonia, while also producing clean wastewater in the process. This partnership led to the establishment of a new company, American Hydrogen Corp. in the Ohio University Innovation Center, which aims to produce inexpensive hydrogen from ammonia and clean wastewater in the process.

Schafer, a computer engineer, was scouting for a cheap source of hydrogen to power small electric generators made by the Hydra Fuel Cell Corp., a subsidiary of American Security Resources Corp. (ASRC). “I’d been looking for six months,” says Schafer. “I was continually being pinged (a submariner term) by people asking me ‘where you gonna get the hydrogen?’” he says.

“Like all fuel cell companies, we’d kind of ducked the question and said the problem will get solved eventually,” he recalls. “But I was getting tired of the questions.”

Schafer knew that nuclear submarines had used ammonia in their reactors’ coolant. “We used lots of it and I was exposed to its chemistry back then,” says Schafer, a proud bubble head for seven years.

An Auspicious Lunch

Fast forward 30 years to the conference in Denver. Schafer encountered Botte and the two sat down for lunch. It was an auspicious meeting.

“I said I worked for a fuel cell company and was trying to fi nd ways to provide hydrogen,” he recalls. “She asked if I’d considered ammonia, and I told her I had, but hadn’t found a way to reduce it to nitrogen and hydrogen. She said ‘let’s talk’ and that’s how it started. It wasn’t long before we were communicating near the speed of a couple of Cray super computers.”

In a nutshell, Botte had developed a patent-pending ammonia catalytic electrolyzer (ACE) technology to efficiently convert ammonia into hydrogen.

Botte, director of Ohio University’s Electrochemical Engineering Research Laboratory came up with the idea of passing ammonia through the electrolyzer after attending a Honda Initiation Grant Conference in Columbus, Ohio, in 2002.

“One of the presenters at the conference said fuel cells are great because you start with clean water, clean energy, and in return you can produce clean water and clean power,” she recalls.

“I went back into my lab after that conference and spent the whole night doing calculations and realized that the thermodynamics of the reaction were wonderful. I said I have to work on this right away,” she says.

Botte did the initial experiments herself and then got her students involved.

“In the beginning it was like using a magnifying glass to look at little bubbles of what we have right now, which is a process that produces tons and tons of hydrogen,” she says (figuratively speaking).

“I started with an idea and a small piece of paper, which had the potential for a commercial application. And now it has become a company.”

Room Temperature

One of the things Schafer liked about Botte’s discovery is that it takes place at room temperature and under low pressure, requiring less energy and expense than high-pressure, high temperature processes.

The cost is also reasonable, too, he says.

Schafer figures Botte’s process involving the ammonia catalytic electrolyzer will be able to process a kilo of hydrogen for $2, far less than the $8 to $10 it costs in today’s market. And a kilo of hydrogen, he notes, is the equivalent of one gallon of gas.

Schafer explains, “It’s our intention to take the ACE to market in conjunction with our Hydra Fuel Cell products as the first commercial ammonia-to-energy process in the one-to-five kilowatt range.

“We also have the grander dream of really getting the hydrogen economy moving by using ammonia as the feedstock to run stationary fuel cells to supply electricity to sites and also to dispense hydrogen for hydrogen powered vehicles.

“What you store locally is ammonia and then convert it to hydrogen for your vehicle,” he says. “Or you store ammonia in a gas tank and convert it onboard to feed an electric fuel cell.”

Environmental Benefits and Profitable Solutions

The sources of ammonia are wide ranging, according to Botte.

“There is a lot of ammonia in the waste slurry from animals, for example, and it is a byproduct of plenty of other processes,” she says. But on the drive back from the Columbus conference in 2002 to her Ohio University campus in Athens, she says she had an epiphany.

“I said ‘wow,’ ammonia from wastewater would be a wonderful source to produce hydrogen because it is abundant and independent of fossil fuels,” she says.

“And if I put the wastewater through an electrolyzer. I remove the ammonia waste from the water and produce clean power and clean water,” she says. “It is a beautiful picture.”

Besides the obvious environmental benefits of removing ammonia from wastewater, there are great benefits for companies that have to dispose of ammonia they use or produce as a byproduct in their manufacturing processes. In some cases, this disposal can be costly, and can require additional time and resources. But now there’s an alternative.

Instead of spending money on ammonia disposal, these companies could potentially use the ammonia catalytic electrolyzer to remove ammonia and resell it to companies that can use it to produce hydrogen, or they might even convert it to hydrogen themselves and resell it. Bottom line, it amounts to transforming a costly waste item into a profitable commodity.

“The great thing about this is that it can go so many places. It could drive a car or even be in a shuttle in a mission to Mars in the future,” she says. Botte says the ACE technology dovetailed with other work she had been doing in her lab during the past several years, such as hydrogen storage.

Schafer, who likes to move fast, visited Ohio University not long after the Denver conference. He toured Botte’s facilities and went back to his board seeking $50,000 to fund a project to scale up her “lab project” from 250 milliwatts to five watts.

The results, he says, were “impressive.”

Fruitful Negotiations = Collaborative Relationship

Ohio University’s Technology Transfer Office and ASRC soon entered negotiations to license Botte’s technology. As a result, the university had a substantial license package, including up-front payment, minimum annual licensee payments, running royalties for fuel cells and hydrogen production, and a sizable equity stake in ASRC for the Ohio University Foundation. And, just as important, Botte’s lab had a two-year, $600,000 sponsored research contract to support her ACE-related research and development project.

At the same time, ASRC created American Hydrogen Corp., which has exclusive worldwide rights to commercialize the technology for hydrogen production and fuel cell applications, and set up the new company in Athens at the Ohio

University Innovation Center, further strengthening the collaborative ties between ASRC and the university.

Robert Malott, associate director for technology commercialization at the university, says gaining equity in ASRC was a key to the deal. In addition to American Hydrogen and Hydra Fuel Cell, ASRC also owns a third company called American Wind Power. ASRC may also make more acquisitions in the energy field, he said.

Malott says the collaboration between the university and ASRC and American Hydrogen Corp. has gone well.

“We liked Ben’s demeanor and found him and the others we dealt with to be straightforward and down-to-earth, the kind of people we like to do business with,” Malott recalls. “There was no “smoke and mirrors” or any game-playing.”

Schafer agrees.

“It’s been great dealing with the Ohio University folks,” he says. “And their Innovation Center, especially if you are in the early stages of starting up a company, is super. The flexibility is nice and you can’t beat the cost in terms of services that are available. It takes a lot of the pain out of being a startup, that’s for sure.”

Botte, a consultant for American Hydrogen, is pleased, too. Not only is her future research being solidly funded, but her graduate students are finding work at the fledgling company.

“There is a lot of interaction between their personnel, myself and my students,” she says. “And I’m advising them on different market and R&D opportunities for the project.

“I think I will always be a professor,” she says. “But I have some ideas for the future of additional things I’d like to start.” 

 

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This story was originally published in 2008.

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

Donald Abraham’s quest to find a new drug to treat sickle cell disease (SCD) has all the intrigue and plot twists of a suspense novel: It’s a decades-long, against-all-odds pursuit filled with overwhelming obstacles, false starts, uncanny timing, dogged determination, international collaborations and not one, but two chance meetings.

Some 40 years after he began looking for a way to alter the underlying molecular mechanism of SCD, the compound Abraham discovered at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), is now a drug candidate being evaluated in clinical trials.

“I threw everything, my whole heart and science into sickle cell disease,” says the retired Abraham, who served as professor of medicinal chemistry and director of VCU’s Institute for Structural Biology and Drug Discovery at from 1988 to 2007. “For a long while it wasn’t the wisest thing to do. But since my postdoctoral days in 1963, my great desire was to use structural biology to discover a drug.”

Structure-Based Drug Design

Structural biology, or structure-based drug design, uses X-ray crystallography or nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to obtain information on a three-dimensional structure — the drug target — to aid in the search for a small molecule to bind to the target in a way that achieves a therapeutic benefit.

“You can think of the structure as the puzzle with a piece missing,” explains Abraham, who was one of the first scientists to attempt to use structural biology for drug design. “You know what the piece has to look like to fit in.”

Abraham chose to work on SCD because it provided him with a ready-made puzzle.

The molecular structure of hemoglobin, a protein inside red blood cells that carries oxygen throughout the body, was the first protein to be decoded — along with a genetic mutation found in people with SCD. When mutant or “sickle” hemoglobin releases its oxygen, it sticks to other sickle hemoglobin (a process called polymerization), creating rigid rods that distort red blood cells from their typically round shape into narrow crescents. These sickle cells stick to each other and to blood vessel walls, causing anemia, organ damage and overwhelming pain.

Searching for a Missing Piece

In 1975, despite a lack of funding and support for SCD research, Abraham launched what would become a decades-long search for a molecule — the missing puzzle piece — to bind to sickle hemoglobin and prevent the polymerization process and the consequent sickling action.

“I was told that I had 0 percent chance of solving this,” says Abraham, who remained undeterred. “I went into this field with the hope of one day discovering a new drug to relieve human suffering.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, SCD is a hereditary disease that mainly affects African Americans: Less than 100,000 people suffer from SCD in the United States — too few to warrant a billion-plus-dollar research program from major pharmaceutical companies.

Pursuing a rare or orphan disease meant Abraham would lose his funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and his research team. But a chance meeting with a professional baseball player fundraising for SCD research led to new funding sources and, eventually, the opportunity to collaborate with Max Perutz at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, who had won a Nobel Prize for his work unraveling hemoglobin. Their research, which spanned an eight-year period, in turn attracted a team of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to Abraham’s VCU lab.

Building Momentum

By the late 1980s, Abraham’s research team had identified a number of compounds that inhibited polymerization in the test tube, but all proved to be too toxic for use in humans.

“Sickle cell patients have almost a pound of hemoglobin,” explains Abraham. “So in the early 1990s we shifted gears and began searching for a food-like agent that could be tolerated at high doses throughout a patient’s lifetime.”

The common flavoring agent vanillin proved promising at first but metabolized too quickly in the body, leaving Abraham and his researchers at a dead end.

Food-Based Agents

Fate intervened once more when Abraham and his wife were on a train trip across Italy and shared a train cabin with a British food chemist.

“I asked him if he knew of any nontoxic food agents like vanillin that might be suitable candidates to test,” says Abraham. “It was a last ditch effort because I had no idea what else could be out there.”

The chemist sent Abraham a list of possible compounds that included a byproduct of browning sugar called 5-Hydroxymethylfurfural (5-HMF). Basic animal studies of the compound, conducted at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, confirmed the efficacy of the compound.

In 2002, Abraham, Martin K. Safo, Ph.D., and Richmond Danso-Danquah, Ph.D., disclosed their discovery to VCU’s Innovation Gateway. Safo, a former postdoctoral fellow in Abraham’s group, is leading the ongoing sickle cell disease drug discovery effort at the Institute for Structural Biology and Drug Discovery.  

“I don’t think any of this would have happened if it weren’t for [former VCU] President Eugene Trani,” says Abraham. “He had a real can-do attitude and an interest in advancing science and our work through commercialization.”

VCU’s Innovation Gateway filed the first patent on 5-HMF in 2004 and licensed the compound to a startup company. When that company failed, a second startup based in Newton, Mass., AesRx, acquired the rights to the preclinical molecule in 2009 and renamed it Aes-103.

“The compound was the most attractive opportunity I had ever seen,” says AesRx CEO Steve Seiler. “There is a crying need for a novel intervention for SCD that is disease modifying. SCD was first described in 1910, and more than 100 years later, there is still no drug to treat it except an anticancer drug that has side effects and compliance issues.”

Ivelina Metcheva, executive director of VCU’s Innovation Gateway, says Seilerprovided a great example of how to communicate with a technology transfer office.

“He continually kept us apprised of where he was in the development process and the obstacles he was facing,” she says. “As a result, we modified the license agreement to give him some breathing room to grow the business.”

Connecting With TRND

With the economy in a tailspin, financing was a major issue for AesRx until 2010, when Seiler connected with the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and the Therapeutics for Rare and Neglected Diseases (TRND) program, part of the NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.

“We created a multiphase, multi-institute, public-private research collaboration with researchers from the NHLBI and TRND,” says Seiler.

Within a year, AesRx was able to apply to the Food and Drug Administration for an investigational new drug application and move into early stage clinical trials, which showed that patients who took one dose of Aes-103 experienced significantly less pain.

A phase II trial designed to test dosing and efficacy began in London in 2013. The NIH provided $5 million in funding to support the collaborative research effort, and AesRx also secured additional financing in the form of a Massachusetts Life Sciences Center Accelerator Loan.

Seiler credits the cooperation among highly skilled researchers, VCU’s Innnovation Gateway and TRND’s business model for the quick progress made on Aes-103.

Derisking Drug Development

“The NIH played a prominent role in getting the clinical data to derisk further development of this drug so it would be appealing to venture capitalists and pharmaceutical companies that could take it the rest of the way,” says Seiler. “You need good science, but you also need good people to associate with. We had good partners.”

In July 2014, the biopharmaceutical company Baxter International acquired Aes-103 and is continuing clinical development activities required for regulatory approval and commercialization, including completing Phase II and III trials.

“From a professional perspective, this was the most satisfying thing I’ve ever done,” says Seiler. “It’s really encouraging and I hope to see it work for patients.”

If Aes-103 is able to improve the lives of SCD patients, it will not only provide a storybook ending for Abraham, it could a start a new chapter for other rare and underfunded diseases.

“The business model that TRND proposed works and can be used for other orphan diseases,” says Seiler. “So there’s an impact beyond the SCD, focus and that’s something we should all be proud of.”

 

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Prostate cancer is the most common type of cancer in America (skin cancers excluded) affecting one in six men. In fact, more than 234,000 men in the United States will be diagnosed with prostate cancer this year, according to the Prostate Cancer Foundation. Prostate cancer can cause pain, difficulty in urinating, erectile dysfunction and other symptoms.

Now, a team of researchers at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, offer a promising weapon in the fight against prostate cancer. Angela Brodie, Ph.D., and Vincent C. O. Njar, Ph.D., both researchers at the university, developed a cadre of proprietary compounds that functionally inhibit the growth of prostate cancer cells.

These inhibitors block the interaction between androgen, a steroid made by the body, and its receptors. Androgen receptors are thought to play a critical role in prostate cancer growth.

The research was supported with a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Tokai Pharmaceuticals, Inc., located in Cambridge, Mass., is the exclusive licensee of the androgen synthesis inhibitor technology.

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This story was originally published in 2007.

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Before the invention of AnemoCheck, hemoglobin levels were measured from blood samples using hematology analyzers housed in hospitals, clinics, or commercial laboratories that requiring skilled technicians to operate.
Now, it’s easy and cost-effective to test your own hemoglobin levels at home using a finger prick. This new test is a significant upgrade for people with chronic anemia who need to test often. It also makes anemia testing more available those living in developing countries where access to a clinic or a trained medical technician is difficult.

AnemoCheck is the brainchild of Erika Tyburski, a graduate of Georgia Tech and current CEO of Sanguina, a biomedical start-up company out of Emory and Georgia Tech.

“We specifically wanted something that did not require electricity or a reader of any kind,” Tyburski says. “They are often complex and cost-prohibitive in user groups who need access the most.”

AnemoCheck’s development began as Tyburski’s senior project in the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering. Wilbur Lam, MD, PhD (Emory, Georgia Tech, Children's) and Siobhan O’Connor, MD, MPH (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) advised Tyburski on the project. Lam was impressed by Erika’s initiative and the quick timeline of AnemoCheck’s takeoff.

“In a few short years, Erika and our lab have turned an undergraduate project into a commercialized product and Erika has transitioned from undergrad to CEO of our start-up company. Now she’s my boss!” Lam said.
 
This project was the work of a major collaborative effort. The Georgia Research Alliance (GRA), an organization dedicated to expanding research capacity at universities and shaping startup companies in the state, is a supporter of AnemoCheck.

Other collaborators and partners for the project include the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a Coulter Translational Partnership Award, Georgia Centers for Innovation and Manufacturing, Atlantic Pediatric Device Consortium, The Foundation for Women and Girls with Blood Disorders, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health.

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This story was originally published in 2020.

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By targeting a new route to raise blood pressure, the first and only FDA-approved drug of its kind, angiotensin II (trade name GIAPREZA™), may save patients’ lives.

An infection (sepsis), allergic reaction, or severe accident can decrease blood flow to the brain, heart, and other vital organs. Hormones that target different blood pressure regulation pathways have been in use for years but are not effective for many patients. 

The George Washington University (GW) School of Medicine and Health Sciences’ Professor Lakhmir Chawla, M.D., tested peptide hormone angiotensin II on 20 patients in a 2014 pilot study. Dr. Chawla found that angiotensin II effectively narrowed blood vessels to increase dangerously low blood pressure in patients with septic shock. 

Because Dr. Chawla’s promising results could significantly improve the safety or effectiveness of treating, diagnosing, or preventing a serious condition, the FDA allowed angiotensin II to proceed directly from the pilot study to a phase III clinical trial. It also provided Priority Review, meaning the FDA intends to act on a New Drug Application within just six months, so a treatment can reach patients sooner than usual.

GW’s TCO managed patent filings using outside patent prosecution counsel, and managed licensing of the exclusive rights to the patents to the La Jolla Pharmaceutical Co. (LJPC) in 2015. They started with an option agreement and negotiated the exclusive license that followed. GW TCO also managed the royalty monetization process, utilizing a well-known royalty monetization structuring agent.

The FDA approved GIAPREZA™ in 2017, and LJPC began selling the drug in 2018.

GW’s TCO also obtained broad international patent protection for GIAPREZA™ which will help provide incentive for LJPC to distribute the drug to patients in need globally.

 “In 2019, the European Commission approved GIAPREZA™ and GW’s European patent was granted.  This provides an opportunity to help patients outside the US,” Kubisen said.

Also in 2019, GW struck a deal with financial services firm Barings LLC to sell a portion of its US royalty rights, a common practice for high-value drugs. GW plans to reinvest this game-changing cash infusion into strategic priorities.

“The money could accelerate commercialization in orthopedics, cancer drugs, cardiac devices, diagnostics, and other products GW is developing or licensing out,” Kubisen said.  

“This is an extraordinary example of GW research and innovation at its best,” said GW President Thomas LeBlanc. “A treatment developed here will improve clinical care and save lives, while at the same time provide resources for our university to reinvest in research for the next big discovery. Our impact on society will only continue to grow.”

Patent Number(s): 9,572,856; 9,867,863; 10,500,247; 10,322,160; 10,335,451; 10,548,943; 9,220,745; 10,028,995; 10,493,124

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This story was originally published in 2020.

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Because dummies are not human, the crash-test data that automobile manufacturers rely on to make design decisions is not as relevant to human safety as it could be. Professor King H. Yang, Ph.D., director of the Bioengineering Center at the College of Engineering at Wayne State University in Detroit, decided to come up with a more “human” way to test car safety.

In the early 1990s Yang, along with professor Albert I. King, Ph.D., and a team of graduate students developed a software program called Anthropomorphic Numerical Surrogate for Injury Reduction (ANSIR). The Centers for Disease Control and the automotive industry supported the research, which exceeded $10 million.

The technology was disclosed in 1995 and licensed in 1998 to Toyota Motor Co. ANSIR is a software program that uses computerized models to demonstrate the detailed effects of car crashes on the human body. The models are based on tests using cadavers and reveal how various crash angles, velocities and car sizes affect the human body, especially internal organs. ANSIR presents far more detailed and accurate information compared to data derived from crash tests with dummies.

Toyota is currently developing its own variation of ANSIR and requires first-tier suppliers to use human models to check the safety performance of the parts they supply. ANSIR technology has been licensed around the world and is expected to save millions of dollars in crash-testing vehicles, improve vehicle safety, and reduce injuries. The software also has applications for designing sports and military helmets, body armor, and for pre-neurosurgical planning.

 

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For over 100 years, antibiotics have been used to fight bacterial infection and disease. However, bacteria are increasingly developing resistance to front line antibiotics,and new therapies are needed to treat these bacterial strains. Dr. Richard Lee, Ph.D., a member of the St. Jude Department of Chemical Biology and Therapeutics, is developing two new classes of compounds to be effective in treating strains that are no longer effectively treated with current therapies. One compound is an adaptation of an old antibiotic- Spectinomycin, which is modified using structure based drug design. The other compound is designed to treat chronic infections and biofilms caused by persister cells that have become tolerant of existing antibiotics. Both compound classes are described below:

Treating resistant bacteria

Dr. Lee’s laboratory designed a promising new class of antibiotics, called aminomethyl spectinomycins, which follows his work on Spectinomycin analogs for treating tuberculosis. In this case a new series of spectinomycin analogs has been developed for treating a broad spectrum of respiratory tract infections including S. pnuemoniae, the most common pathogenic bacteria associated with this type of infection. The aminomethyl spectinomycins are active against drug resistant strains. In collaboration with Dr. Jason Rosch in the Infectious Diseases department, the robust efficacy of this compound series has been demonstrated at low compound dosing levels, further validating this series. These compounds have been licensed by Microbiotix, a privately-held, clinical stage biopharmaceutical company engaged in the discovery and development of novel small molecule anti-infectives.

“This study demonstrates how classic antibiotics derived from natural products can be redesigned to create semi-synthetic compounds to overcome  drug resistance.” - Richard Lee, Ph.D.

Treating tolerant bacteria

Dr. Lee and his collaborators developed another set of compounds designed to treat bacteria, fungi and parasites that develop multidrug tolerance by becoming dormant.
 
When persister cells are left behind, they become a reservoir from which an infection can recur. Examples of chronic infections include endocarditis, urinary tract infections, gingivitis, middle ear infections, fatal lung disease (cystic fibrosis) and infections produced by biofilms.

These infections are often associated with implanted medical devices, such as catheters and artificial joints. Multidrug tolerant infections account for more than 60% of all microbial infections, are hard to treat and subject to infection relapse. Traditional antibiotics kill active cells via inhibition; however, this new set of compounds acts to kill dormant cells. They could be used to treat infections caused by biofilms; and other infections caused by chronic bacteria persister cells. These compounds have been licensed to Arietis, a Boston-based biotechnology company, focused on the discovery and development of novel antimicrobial agents.

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Infections are a growing problem in health care settings. According to the Centers for Disease Control, there are 4.5 hospital infections for every 100 patient admissions, and nearly 100,000 deaths annually from hospital infections.

To fight this problem, department of surgery researchers at Columbia University in New York, N.Y. have developed an antimicrobial coating for implanted medical devices that reduces the risk of post-operative infection. From 1984 to 1987 Shanta Modak, M.D., Charles Fox, M.D., and Lester Sampath, M.D. developed the method and technology for applying an antimicrobial coating to medical devices and surfaces, making them infection-resistant.

The coating consists of a polymeric matrix containing antimicrobial silver sulfadiazine and chlorhexidine. Initially funded with $500,000 from Daltex Medical Sciences, early experiments involved coating urinary catheters, gauze dressings, soft tissue patches, arterial grafts, catheters, wound covers, gloves, mask, contraceptive devices and implantable pumps.

Columbia University licensed this technology to Daltex Medical Sciences in 1987, which later sublicensed it to Arrow International. Arrow International has sold more than five million central venous catheters that utilize this technology.

W.L. Gore also incorporates this coating in manufacturing the only  hernia repair material that inhibits bacterial colonization in the hernia repair patch for up to two weeks after its implantation. Current research also indicates a lower risk of microorganisms developing resistance to antimicrobialcoated surfaces compared to non-coated implanted medical devices, making them a better long-term solution for patients.

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Industrial crane operators typically manipulate the independent motions of trolley, hoisting and traverse when they are moving payloads. This, however, can result in an uncontrolled swaying motion, which slows down the construction process because extra time is required to let the swaying motion come to a stop. Uncontrolled swaying is also a safety issue that can result in serious injury. 

Led by associate professor Ong Chong Jin, researchers at the National University of Singapore’s Mechanical Engineering Department have developed a highly effective solution to the control of payload sway in industrial crane and crane-like structures. The “Anti-Sway Control of a Crane Under Operator’s Command” technology was developed in 2000.

In response to the operator’s command for trolley, hoist and traverse motions, this software program utilizes a family of differential equations to calculate the precise counter-adjustments necessary for canceling out sway. The differential equations are solved in real time, using sensory measurement of the cable length and its time derivative.

The program also responds immediately to the operator’s commands under simultaneous trolley/hoisting and traverse/hoisting motions. The software takes into account the acceleration, velocity, and span limits of the drive system of the crane to ensure the anti-sway control is not compromised when these limits are reached.

 

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Bed bugs are insects that feed on blood, usually at night. Their bites can result in a myriad health problems, from skin rashes to blisters and allergic symptoms. They are also stealthy travelers, hitching rides in luggage, purses, backpacks, or other items left on upholstered surfaces.

No doubt you’ve heard stories from those who’ve brought home bed bugs from a hotel stay. And then spent thousands of dollars exterminating the pests, commonly using costly thermal remediation.

Driven by the scourge of the bed bug epidemic, Dr. Nina Jenkins, a Research Professor in the Department of Entomology at The Pennsylvania  State University and  three co-inventors, developed, with the aid of USDA funding, a biopesticide formulation that controls and prevents bed bug infestations. The biopesticide uses a natural fungal disease of insects that kills bed bugs, but is harmless to humans and pets.

Bed bugs pick up the fungal spores by walking on a treated surface. The technology exploits the natural behavior of bed bugs, which hide in group harborages that are typically inaccessible to pesticides.

How does it work? The fungal spores attach to the exoskeleton of the bed bug, germinate and eventually kill the insect. Exposed bed bugs return to their harborage where they unknowingly share the spores with their nestmates, resulting in eradication of the entire population.

Jenkins worked closely with the Penn State Office of Technology Management to obtain U.S. Patent No. 10,085,436 in October 2018.

Jenkins added,  “Matt Smith,  Sr. Technology Licensing Officer at the Office of Technology Management, was quick to understand the technology and its potential, and was an invaluable resource throughout the development and commercialization process. He assisted with selection of appropriate legal representation for preparation of the patent, and provided input and assistance, preparing a fair and reasonable agreement for the licensing of the technology. This is a great example of how the Office of Technology Management works to maximize the commercialisation of research outputs at Penn State."

It was after winning several innovation contests, that Jenkins and her co-founder, Giovani Bellicanta, established ConidioTec, LLC, and in July 2014, executed an exclusive licensing agreement with the University’s licensing entity, the Penn State Research Foundation.

Using funds from the College of Agricultural Sciences, Jenkins was able to support US Environmental Protection Agency registration of the product, known as Aprehend®.

Working with pest management professionals, ConidioTec established an effective protocol for use of Aprehend, which reduces the number of spray applications required for bed bug eradication, and reduces the preparation requirements for householders prior to treatment.

ConidioTec launched Aprehend® at the National Pest Management Association PestWorld conference in October 2017. Today it is available to pest management professionals across the U.S. and Canada. For more information, visit www.aprehend.com.

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This story was originally published in 2022.

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

Healthcare facilities in the developing world lack many resources, including access to expensive surgical equipment. As a result, some 5 billion people lack access to safe surgery because surgeons do not have access to the right medical equipment.

Case in point: orthopedic drills needed to perform surgery on serious bone and muscle injuries cost upwards of $30,000. That leaves orthopedic surgeons in low-resource areas with two options — they can use non- sterile hardware drills which increase the  risk of infection, or use sterile, hand-cranked drills that are labor- intensive and  lack precision.

Working with surgeons from Canada and Uganda, graduate students in biomedical engineering at the University of British Columbia (UBC) created a third and more appealing option — a reusable drill cover that transforms a drill purchased at a hardware store into a sterile surgical instrument.

UBC assigned the patented drill cover to Arbutus Medical. The company’s flagship product, the Arbutus Drill Cover, has been used in more than 12,000 surgeries in 20 countries. Use of the sterilizable and reusable drill cover has  helped reduce the rate of infection, improve patient outcomes and reduce operating times.

Arbutus Medical named the company after the Arbutus tree, an evergreen tree native to the southwest coast of British Columbia that thrives in harsh environments. Like its namesake, the company is working with surgeons around the world to develop safe, affordable and appropriate medical equipment for low-resource environments.

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This story was originally published in 2015.

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In industrialized countries, a milk cooler is where shoppers grab a gallon of milk at the grocery store. A nutcracker is something people use to pry open a pecan.

But in developing countries, those two devices can look quite different. In some countries, a milk cooler is something a dairy farmer uses to keep his cows’ milk from spoiling. A nutcracker is a person with a rock.

Thanks to William Kisaalita, Ph.D., a professor and tissue engineer at the University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens, storing and harvesting food has become much easier for farmers in Uganda and Morocco. The milk cooler and nutcracker he developed give an economic boost to those who struggle to make a living.

The Uganda-born Kisaalita worked with UGA engineering students to develop these two devices. And though the innovations may be made of metal, a lot of heart goes into the invention process.

The professor, who grew up just outside Kampala, Uganda, is now a U.S. citizen. He and his wife, an accountant, have four children who are healthy and successful. His current surroundings are a stark contrast to the place where he grew up: a house made of reeds and mud, lit by kerosene and heated with wood.

Kisaalita left Uganda, earned his doctoral degree in Canada, and joined UGA’s College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences in 1991. After asking himself what he could do to help people like those he had grown up with, he set up a program in which engineering students can go overseas and design products to help the poor.

The first product they came up with was a milk cooler about the size of a dishwasher. Farmers along Uganda’s “cattle corridor,” a 50,000-square-mile dry-land area stretching north to south, are now using that cooler.

That region is home to more than 2.5 million dairy farms. Most farmers have between two and five cows. Farmers milk the cows, which produce an average of 50 liters of milk a day, in the morning and evening.

During the day, farmers sell the milk to local vendors who transport the milk to cooling stations. But those markets are closed in the evening. So, in the past, farmers had no way to cool the milk produced in the evening. The

So Kisaalita and 15 of his undergraduate students came up with a power-independent cooler for short-term milk storage. The cooler uses a vacuum system and a mineral called zeolite to help keep the milk cold.

Research funding came from a number of sources: the University of Georgia Research Foundation Inc., the World Bank, U.S. National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

After the first prototype of the cooler didn’t work well enough to market, Kisaalita found an unlikely partner: a German company called Cool-System KEG GmbH, which had designed a selfcooling keg for beer drinkers. After some redesign, Cool-System produced a cooler called CoolChurn. The keglike cooler chills15 liters of milk within three or four hours, and keeps it cold for a full day.

But instead of resting on his laurels, Kisaalita has continued to engineer practical, simple solutions for Africa’s rural poor. So when a colleague approached him in 2005 on behalf of people in rural Morocco, Kisaalita took up the challenge.

The professor and his students were determined to crack the mystery of how to help the Moroccans. Women and children in Morocco used rocks to manually open argan nuts, which contain oil-rich seeds. When cracked open, those seeds yield argan oil, which gourmands around the world use as a cooking ingredient. The oil also serves as a rich source of vitamin E for cosmetics.

Cracking those nuts using rocks was not only labor-intensive, it was unsafe. Workers engaged in this work sometimes broke fingers. Sustaining such an injury meant women and children faced periods of inactivity and lost income from one of the few economic activities available to them. Given the lack of proper medical care, those broken fingers often resulted in poorly healed bones. That could lead to hand or finger deformity — even permanent injury.

So Kisaalita and students Max Neu, Meghan Samberg, Jonathan Dunn and Phillip Jones designed a simple metal-and-wood structure that cracks one nut at a time and is three times faster than cracking with rocks. The device is much sturdier than a nutcracker a consumer in the United States might use for something like an almond because argan nuts are incredibly hard to crack. Kisaalita’s nutcracker maximizes safety, thereby eliminating injuries while greatly increasing productivity and income.

The University of Georgia Research Foundation Inc. and the University of Georgia Office of the Vice President for Public Service and Outreach both funded the technology, which is now in use in Morocco.

Someone who lives in an industrialized country may not always think about where the food comes from before it arrives on a dinner plate. But for William Kisaalita and his students, the question of how farmers will get food on the table is one they won’t be forgetting anytime soon.

 

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This story was originally published in 2011.

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One of Africa’s most harmful pests, the tsetse fly, has been all but eradicated from parts of the continent thanks to a novel artificial cow developed by an international group of researchers, including scientists from the University of Greenwich.

Today, sleeping sickness is virtually unheard of.

The artificial cows attract tsetse — which can infect humans and  cattle with fatal sleeping sickness — by emitting chemicals (kairomones) to mimic the smell of real cattle. The fake cattle are impregnated with insecticides that kill the tsetse attracted to them.

The cows were introduced to Zimbabwe in the mid-1980s, when thousands of cattle were infected with nagana (the equivalent to human sleeping sickness), transmitted by tsetse.

Cases of nagana in Zimbabwe been virtually zero for the last five years with the help of nearly 60,000 articificial cows. The fake cows also act as an effective barrier to stop tsetse re-invading areas cleared of flies.

Not only are artificial cows highly successful in controlling tsetse, but their use also results in a dramatic reduction in the amount of insecticide necessary to control the pest.

With only four artificial cows needed per square kilometre to ensure effective pest control, the use of insecticide is far more targeted than conventional widespread aerial and ground spraying, resulting in a greatly reduced environmental impact.

 

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This story was originally published in 2007.

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A 76-year-old woman with chronic emphysema was admitted to a hospital in India earlier this year. She was complaining of shortness of breath and was diagnosed as being in respiratory failure, meaning she had a buildup of carbon dioxide in her lungs and couldn’t take deep enough breaths to push it out and suck in oxygen instead.

Normally doctors would put such a patient on a mechanical ventilator, which would mean sedating her so they could insert a breathing tube down her throat. Instead, her doctors decided she was the ideal person to be enrolled as the first patient in a study of a new artificial lung initially developed by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, called the Hemolung.

The device is connected to a patient by a catheter. It pumps blood out of the patient, runs it across a bundle of fibers that pull out carbon dioxide and infuse oxygen, then sends the blood back into the patient, thus doing about 50 percent of the work of the person’s failing lungs.

“It was very rewarding to see that happen,” says Nick Kuhn, chief operating officer (COO) of ALung Technologies, the Pittsburgh company developing the Hemolung. ALung is hoping to finish its first clinical trial on patients in Europe and

India early next year and then apply for approval in the United States. The goal is to be able to help the 450,000 people in this country and millions more worldwide avoid temporary hookup to a ventilator, thus granting them a shorter and more comfortable stay in the hospital.

Carbon Dioxide out and Oxygen in

The innovation grew out of work in the Medical Devices Laboratory at the University of Pittsburgh. The external device now known as the Hemolung has changed shape considerably, having started as an internal device. Professors Brack Hattler, M.D., Ph.D., and William Federspiel, Ph.D., designed what they called the Hattler catheter in the mid-1990s. The catheter held a series of tiny hollow fiber tubes that were bundled together and was inserted into a patient’s large vein during respiratory failure. The tubes had oxygen running through them, so when the patient’s blood ran across them, it picked up oxygen and left behind carbon dioxide.

ALung is focusing on two types of potential patients, those with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and those with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). COPD patients, who often have emphysema, have trouble breathing deeply because the airways in their lungs are restricted, having grown stiff or swollen over the years. ARDS patients’ lungs have been damaged as a result of another disease or accident, and they tend to develop ARDS while in the hospital.

In its first trial, ALung is looking at the Hemolung’s effect on people with COPD who have a sudden drop in respiratory function.

“They could get a cold or a flu or anything that puts these patients over the edge,” Federspiel explains. “If you or I get a bad cold in the winter, we don’t have to go to the intensive care unit because we breathe fine. If they get a bad cold, they can’t breath.”

The artificial lung is a temporary device needed to get them through that period of acute need, usually three to four days. “Eventually the cold or flu resolves itself and they get better,” he says.

Starting a Company

Hattler, who died in 2008, and Federspiel patented the catheter-based artificial lung with the help of the University of Pittsburgh’s Office of Technology Management (OTM) and founded ALung in 1997. They didn’t have any plans to commercialize the device at the time, but needed to work with a company to apply for grants. The research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Army.

By 2001, they were presenting their idea at scientific conferences and had started generating enthusiasm for an actual catheter-based device, Federspiel says. They couldn’t find an established company interested in licensing the technology, so they decided to set out on their own.

But first they needed to negotiate a one year licensing option with the university, explains Maria Vanegas, OTM technology licensing associate. The office generally grants options to startups because this strategy is a simpler and less expensive way to investigate whether there really is a market for the product. Startups can use that year to perform due diligence on the technology and to start fundraising, she says.

They also brought in an outside chief executive officer for the first time, choosing Kuhn (who switched to COO in 2009), a veteran of other medical device companies. Kuhn worked at raising money, while Hattler and Federspiel toiled in the lab to make the catheter as small as possible. After the one-year option was up, the company fully licensed the technology.

In 2005, they found that the miniaturization of the catheter device topped out at about 1 centimeter in diameter. While it worked well in animal studies, the scientific advisory board assembled by Kuhn opined that such a large a catheter would be unappealing to many medical professionals.

“It became obvious that we needed to make a change,” Kuhn says.

After much deliberation, they decided to scrap the Hattler catheter and turned to a related innovation — the one that eventually became the Hemolung.

Breathing New Life Into the Project

Federspiel had been working on another iteration of the technology that used the same fiber bundle but positioned it outside the body. Because the bundle didn’t have to get inside the person’s vein, the catheter size dropped to 5 millimeters in diameter, the same size used in kidney dialysis.

There was a precedent for an external artificial lung. A technology called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) is used at a small number of hospitals in the country. It removes a patient’s blood, adjusts the gas levels and then pumps it back into the body. But, because it removes two to three liters of blood a minute, the patient has to be very carefully monitored.

“If there’s a complication in the line, they could bleed out,” Federspiel says. “The technology is considered very invasive and complex.”

Federspiel figured that if he could come up with a way to remove sufficient carbon dioxide using a much smaller amount of blood per minute, the technology would be a far more attractive. But removing less blood meant that the artificial lung had to be more efficient in restoring the correct carbon dioxide and oxygen levels to have the same desired effect.

That’s when he had the idea of rotating the fibers. Spinning the fibers allows them to come into contact with more blood as it’s pumped out and so it works more efficiently, Federspiel explains. The Hemolung removes about 400 milliliters of blood a minute, or between a 5th and a 10th as much as the ECMO machine. ALung changed the design while retaining the concept so that the blood now rotates around stationary fibers rather than the opposite.

ALung is now focusing exclusively on the Hemolung. While this switch has slowed down the company’s plans for generating a product, everyone agrees that it has made the device much more marketable. Vanegas applauds Hattler and Federspiel’s determination to see the project succeed, despite the initial setback.

“It’s unique when you find dedicated inventors who don’t get frustrated with the process, especially when they had one device and then had to switch,” she says.

For patients like the woman in India, the device’s long evolution was definitely worth it, both for the medical care it provides and the ability to avoid being hooked to a ventilator.

“They’re able to move around, get out of bed,” Federspiel says. “They have the ability to eat normally, talk normally and express how they’re feeling. It’s a significant quality-of-life improvement.”

 

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This story was originally published in 2010.

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Living with Type 1 diabetes (T1D) requires constant management. Due to a deficient pancreas, food and exercise must be manually balanced against blood sugar and regular insulin injections. Even for patients with insulin pumps and compact monitors, managing T1D creates daily medical decisions that burden basic activities with the disease’s life-threatening nature.

The concept of an artificial pancreas, based on a complex algorithmic combination of pumps and monitors into one closed-loop system, has been around for as long as pumps and monitors themselves. And yet, it has for decades remained unsolvable, a far-flung hope flying the face of the reality that emulating organic pancreatic function presents impossibly complex problems.
 
Among the group of interdisciplinary researchers from the UVA Schools of Medicine and Engineering in Charlottesville, VA were Boris Kovatchev, Ph.D., who was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors in 2020, Stephen Patek, Ph.D., Patrick Keith-Hynes, Ph.D., Marc Breton, Ph.D., and Stacey Anderson, M.D.

The research team attracted early funding in 2006 from the National Institutes of Health, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) and UVA’s LaunchPad supported by the Manning Family Foundation. This support enabled the development of a simulator that digitally replicated the human metabolic system in order to connect Continuous Glucose Monitoring (CGM) systems to insulin pumps. Pre-clinical trials of automated insulin delivery using the simulator began at UVA in 2008 and expanded to include 10 other centers across seven countries.
By 2011, ongoing research and development led to new iterations of the device that had shrunk from a bulky computer system into a wireless smartphone device, leading to staggering success in further clinical trials. Recognizing the strength of the team’s research and intellectual property portfolio, the UVA Licensing & Ventures Group (LVG) tapped UVA alumnus Chad Rogers to launch TypeZero Technologies, Inc., in 2013, with a license for the artificial pancreas technology. When TypeZero launched, it held the single largest patent portfolio ever licensed from LVG, which leveraged more than 30 clinical trials with more than 500 patients at 12 sites, including one at UVA. Several members of the research team, including Stephen Patek and Patrick Keith-Hynes, joined the company to further develop and productize the “artificial pancreas.”
 
In 2015, TypeZero received the first investment from the newly established $10 million LVG Seed Fund, enabling the company to further develop the platform and attracted Dexcom Inc., and Tandem Diabetes Care as partners for a large-scale, multi-site NIH-funded clinical trial.
 
“This story is representative of what is possible when we harness the full capacity of this institution to support innovation,” said Michael Straightiff, LVG Executive Director. “Our interdisciplinary team of researchers leveraged federal funds, the financial generosity of our alumni, and our sophisticated translational research infrastructure to engineer technologies to relieve the heavy decision-making burden from patients living with diabetes. Then, in partnership with our research team, LVG once again leveraged the time and talent of our alumni to build, invest in, and sell a company that productized these early technologies. The story, though not yet over, has culminated in local economic development, return on investment, and, most importantly, lives enriched and improved by the University of Virginia.”


In August 2018, Dexcom, Inc. acquired TypeZero Technologies, Inc., uniting the groundbreaking artificial pancreas technology with an industry giant capable of bringing TypeZero’s innovative solutions to the commercial market. The acquisition marked the first exit for the LVG Seed Fund, and the artificial pancreas reached a coveted commercialization status rarely achieved by university technologies.
 
The technology made its commercial debut with Tandem Diabetes Care in January 2020 as Control-IQ™, and has since improved the lives of more than 155,000 patients with Type 1 diabetes. The system is the first of its kind to secure FDA approval and integrates with the Dexcom G6 CGM system. The increasing potential of Control-IQ™ motivated a five-year sponsored research agreement with Dexcom that LVG helped secure to continue advancing the Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes research at UVA.
 

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This story was originally published in 2021.

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More than 90 percent of people in the U.S. who have HIV, and many around the world, take at least one of the drugs invented by Emory researchers Ray Schinazi, Dennis Liotta, and Woo-Baeg Choi.

In the early 1990s, Schinazi, an infectious disease and antiviral expert, Liotta, a chemist, and Choi, who was a postdoctoral research associate in Liotta's lab at the time, announced the discovery of an unusual molecule, FTC (emtricitabine, sold alone as Emtriva®, with the "Em" standing for Emory) and a chemically similar compound, 3TC (lamivudine, sold alone as Epvir®).
 
"In addition to being quite effective, Emtriva® is one of the safest antiretroviral agents available," says Liotta. "This is quite important because AIDS patients have to take their drug regimens every day of their lives."
 
Both drugs are in the class known as nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, which work against the enzyme that copies HIV RNA into new viral DNA.

 View Accompanying Video Series

"Everyone was intrigued but skeptical about our work—no one realized the importance of what we had found," Schinazi says. "We pushed Emory University very hard to file patent applications to protect these inventions (FTC and 3TC). Emory finally did, and received the rewards less than ten years later."
   
FTC was licensed in 1996 to Triangle Pharmaceuticals, a biotech company founded by Schinazi in 1995. In 1999 and again in 2002, Emory resolved patent disputes with various third parties to consolidate intellectual property rights and clear the path to market for FTC.
 
In 2003, Gilead acquired Triangle for $482 million; in the same year, FTC was approved by the FDA. Shire and GlaxoSmithKline jointly licensed Emory's patents related to 3TC, which is contained in at least five FDA-approved therapeutics (including a drug to treat chronic hepatitis B).
 
In 2005, Gilead Sciences and Royalty Pharma signed a deal with Emory to buy its FTC royalty interest for $525 million. Gilead paid Emory an additional $15 million to alter the terms of the license as it relates to the company's plans for developing the compound for use against another disease. Emory College and the School of Medicine were major beneficiaries of the $540 million sale, along with the departments of chemistry and pediatrics and the laboratories of Liotta and Schinazi. Choi left Emory to found the drug-discovery company FOB Synthesis Inc. The three scientists shared 40 percent of the sale.
 
In August 2004, Gilead obtained approval for Truvada®, a fixed-dose combination of Emtriva® and Viread® for use by people infected with HIV. (In July 2012, the FDA also approved the use of Truvada® to help uninfected people at high risk for the AIDS virus. Truvada® was the first HIV drug to be approved by the FDA for preventative use.)
 
In July 2006, Gilead and Bristol-Myers-Squibb gained approval for the first once-a-day, single tablet regimen for adults with HIV— Atripla® —from the FDA. Atripla® is intended either as a stand-alone therapy or to be used in combination with other antiretrovirals.
 
By combining the three drugs, efavirenz (Sustiva®), emtricitabine (Emtriva®) and tenofovir disoporxil fumarate (Viread®), Atripla® reduces pill burden and simplifies dosing schedules, easing compliance, storage, transport and distribution. In North America and Europe, Atripla® is marketed jointly by Gilead and BMS, but in much of the developing world, marketing and distribution is handled by Merck & Co. Merck announced that it will lower the cost of the drug in countries with high HIV prevalence, and will use a sliding scale based on each country's wealth. It is registering Atripla® in forty-five countries in the Middle East and Africa and in nine countries in Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia.
 
Schinazi is the Frances Winship Walters Professor of Pediatrics at Emory and director of the Laboratory of Biochemical Pharmacology. Liotta is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor at Emory and Executive Director of the Emory Institute for Drug Development.
 
"It's very gratifying to see that our work has helped so many people all over the world," Schinazi says. "HIV is no longer a death sentence."

Related Blogs:

• Evolution of an Epidemic: Taming a Killer Virus
• Marianne Swanson: The Survivor
• Nina Martinez: The HIV Positive Twin
• Dennis Liotta: The Chemist
• Raymond Schinazi: The Virologist
• George Painter: The Corporate Partner
• Jeff Lennox: The HIV Physician

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The United States spends approximately twice as much as other high-income countries on medical care, yet utilization rates are similar to those in other nations. One exception is advanced imaging tests, such as MRIs and CTs, which have a higher utilization rate and higher cost per test in the United States.

Dr. Keith Hentel and a multi-disciplinary radiology team at Weill Cornell Medicine (WCM) of Cornell University in New York, New York, recognized an opportunity to impact healthcare costs and standardization through improved clinical delivery of advanced diagnostic imaging tests based on evidence-based best practices. The team developed criteria that could be deployed on any digital platform and utilized by physicians and other healthcare providers.

The team included a multidisciplinary panel of experts in clinical trials, imaging studies, primary care, and statistical analysis fields to implement this work, furthering the “Protecting Access to Medicare Act” of 2014 (PAMA) which created the Medicare Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) consultation program. AUC aims to benefit providers and patients by verifying the necessity of expensive imaging studies and ensuring the appropriateness and standardization of advanced diagnostic imaging services provided to Medicare beneficiaries. Beginning in January 2023, AUC consultation will be mandatory for all Medicare patients' MRI and CT imaging services. The large market opportunity created by this government mandate targets the more than 1.5 million providers (physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants) who order advanced imaging diagnostics for their Medicare patients.
In partnership with the Center for Technology Licensing (CTL) at WCM, the team’s work has been translated into a digital health solution. It is currently implemented by companies such as Siemens, Stranson, Cranberry, and Cornell startup Radrite. They have licensed it to translate AUC into digital logic and implement it with Qualified Decision Support Mechanisms (QDSMs). The digital logic allows it to work on an electronic health record down to the level of a digital app. CTL at WCM  recognized the diversity of providers and facilities impacted by the government mandate -- from large hospital systems that have integrated Electronic Health Records to the small physician practices still using paper records.

Since 2017, the licensing team has addressed these different market opportunities with non-exclusive licenses, including the market leader and Cornell startup  Radrite, the first mobile application to serve small physician practices. Since 2020, as systems come online to address the mandate, the licenses have generated over US$ 600K in royalty revenue.

 
 

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This story was originally published in 2022.

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Audax Medical, Inc., a Massachusetts-based medical innovations developer, worked with Northeastern University to license a repurposed pre-market technology that uses a nano-molecular approach to viral therapy and can be deployed in the fight against COVID.

Audax first licensed Northeastern's tech to provide an injectable nano-molecular material that could help regenerate tissue and cartilage in patients. As development continued, in the years since Audax's licensing, researchers noticed that these molecules also helped prevent the spread of bacterial infections. The technology is still being commercialized for several regenerative medicine applications.

 

 

"This was our call to action,” said Ted Werth, Director of Entrepreneurship at Northeastern University's Center for Research Innovation. “We immediately processed the technology disclosure and patent filing and worked with Audax to quickly execute a license agreement covering Professor Thomas Webster's new IP.” Webster heads the "Nano-Medicine Lab" at the College of Engineering at Northeastern University, responsible for researching and developing advanced nano-molecular technology.  “The entire process, from initial conversation to signed license, took just a few weeks,” said Werth. Adding, “Northeastern's rapid response was key to advancing the promising new application of this important technology."

The material that Webster’s team produces may prove a safe and effective viral therapy to combat COVID-19 as well as providing relief for inflammatory symptoms.

"It's inspiring to witness best-in-class research focused on therapeutic development, diagnostics, and drug discovery repurposed so quickly to address the COVID-19 virus," Werth said.

They are awaiting FDA approval and thorough testing before it can be administered to patients but are confident they will meet these obstacles and move the treatment to market.

"We believe advancing our efforts and combined scientific expertise with Dr. Webster and his team in addressing this global crisis is our responsibility. Audax is honored to partner with Northeastern on this critical pursuit," said Mark Johanson, Founder and CEO of Audax Medical.

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This story was originally published in 2020.

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One in two adults are affected by a musculoskeletal condition and 61% of all sports injuries are musculoskeletal*. Conventional treatment of musculoskeletal injury begins with a subjective assessment of an individual’s physical movements. This assessment and corrections through physical therapy can result in high outcome variability, in part due to the manual process and the patient’s ability to retain and apply instructions on their own.

A team in the Division of Sports Medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, in collaboration with psychologists at University of Cincinnati, developed an autonomous digital health solution called aNMT (Augmented Neuromuscular Training) to assess movement and provide feedback in real-time. Using cameras and proprietary algorithms, positional information is processed in milliseconds, giving biofeedback about whether a movement was correct. aNMT acts as a virtual coach to assess, correct, and optimize the user’s biomechanics, objectively and autonomously. Funding for the early development of this technology came from the National Institutes of Health, the State of Ohio and the Cincinnati Children’s Innovation Fund.

The technology transfer office of the medical center, Cincinnati Children’s Innovation Ventures (CCIV), worked closely with inventors to develop their investment pitches, and performed extensive due diligence to explore company formation. Ultimately, the team successfully negotiated the favorable terms of an exclusive license to IncludeHealth, a Cincinnati based start-up. CCIV worked closely with the medical center’s leadership and compliance department, seed investor and Entrepreneurial Services Provider CincyTech, and external counsel to develop the investment rationale, and to manage multiple agreements with the licensor, inventors and key contributors.

aNMT is being integrated into IncludeHealth’s cloud platform and connected equipment, to provide clinically validated treatment paths for patients, including children and adults recovering from musculoskeletal diseases, disorders or injuries; seniors with mobility issues or other musculoskeletal pain; and athletes of all ages and physical ability.
 

*Source: U.S. Bone and Joint Initiative

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This story was originally published in 2021.

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In the event of a disease outbreak or biochemical terrorist attack, identifying the pathological agents as quickly as possible is critical for mitigating losses. Technology developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., now automates the molecular analytical process.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is a U.S. Department of Energy research laboratory managed by the University of California. The new automation technology, involving a micro-machined chemical reaction chamber with rapid and precise thermal control, was developed from 1994-1995 by LLNL researchers Allen Northrup, Raymond Mariella, Anthony Carrano and Joseph Balch. Initial funding was provided by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an arm of the U.S. Department of Defense.

What makes this technology unique is the improvement in the thermal control over the reaction occurring in the reaction chamber. Before this technology was developed, a single heating/cooling cycle for copying a DNA strand could take up to four to five minutes, and 30-40 cycles would require several hours for full amplification and identification. Not only do long cycle times delay the DNA identification, but they also permit extraneous reactions to occur in the sample and interfere with the analysis. LLNL technology is a more efficient way to reproduce exact copies of DNA sequences, decreasing the cycle time to as little as several seconds to copy a single strand of DNA, and the full amplification process to a matter of minutes.

The technology was licensed by LLNL to Cepheid, a California-based startup company founded in 1997 to develop and commercialize genetic analysis systems for the clinical assessment, biothreat and life sciences markets. Core products being marketed today by Cepheid that are licensed under this technology are Smart Cycler®  and GeneXpert real-time thermocyclers, which can quickly perform a variety of genetic tests. Cepheid is to continue developing a broader array of tests for the scientific and medical communities.

Smart Cycler®  and GeneXpert are trademarks of Cepheid.

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In 2003, the Office of Technology Transfer licensed the patents to Nihon Mediphysics — a Japanese joint venture owned by Sumitomo and GE Healthcare — which had provided funding for Goodman’s research for 10 years beginning in 1994. In 2008, GE Healthcare licensed the fluciclovine F-18 imaging compound from Nihon Mediphysics. But then GE concentrated its efforts on a different imaging compound — one for Alzheimers’ — and fluciclovine F-18 languished. That frustrated not only Emory researchers but also a few GE employees, including David Gauden.

“GE has a lot of options about where it can invest its money,” says Gauden. “It was clear to some of us that this particular project was not going to be a priority for them,” he says. “But we believed in the product. We could see an unmet need.” When prostate cancer spreads, it often goes to lymph nodes and bone. Fluciclovine F-18 could more accurately detect cancer in those areas, says Gauden, compared to other types of diagnostic scans that had trouble spotting cancer if it wasn’t a large tumor mass.

To help that innovation reach the marketplace, Gauden and several of his colleagues left GE and formed Blue Earth Diagnostics in 2014. The company’s founding investor was Syncona, an investment company aligned with the Wellcome Trust and Cancer Research UK.

In 2014, GE licensed fluciclovine F-18 to Blue Earth Diagnostics, which now markets the compound under the name Axumin. “We continue to have a productive collaboration with GE,” says Gauden, now CSO at Blue Earth Diagnostics. “They make some of the raw materials for us for product manufacturing.”

He notes that the licensing history of the compound involves three continents — with companies in the United States, Japan and UK— and Emory’s tech transfer office played a critical role along the way. “It’s a fairly complicated licensing chain, and Emory’s tech transfer has done a lot of work to keep everyone happy,” says Gauden. “We also work very collaboratively with Emory to strengthen the patent portfolio on this product.”

Axumin received FDA approval in May 2016 and marketing authorization from the European Commission came one year later. "The FDA gave us an expedited review. … I think because they could perceive the unmet need," said Gauden.

With U.S. headquarters in Burlington, Mass., and global headquarters in Oxford, Blue Earth Diagnostics now has more than 50 employees and hopes to expand Axumin’s use for other cancers. That includes brain cancer — which originally prompted the development of fluciclovine F-18 at Emory — as well as breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and bladder cancer. Those possibilities are being investigated clinically, says Gauden.

"To have that kind of impact already is great, and we look forward to much more of that in the future," says Gauden. “It’s just great to sit here and think, we are able to actually progress a technology that may not have progressed otherwise,” 

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This story was originally published in 2018.

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Western University Chemistry Professor Emeritus Duncan Hunter gets a little choked up when it’s noted the work he began more than three decades ago will now, finally, be applied to saving hundreds of lives in the form of the drug Azedra.
 
In 2018 the new compound, developed by Progenics Pharmaceuticals, became the first FDA-approved therapy for this use, offering hope to patients with rare adrenal gland tumors. It decreases the need for blood pressure medication and reduces the size of tumors in about one-quarter of patients – people who had exhausted all other medical options.
Adrenal cancers affect about 1,000 people in the United States each year. 
Hunter developed the compound with his Western lab team 30 years ago and then, after years of further development, applied for the patent.
The compound is highly radioactive and, once injected intravenously is specifically absorbed by, and then attacks the tumor, while the kidneys flush out the material it doesn’t use. Key to Azedra’s success is the use of a radioactive pharmaceutical called metaiodobenzylguanidine (MIBG), a compound designed to target only the tumor.
“Essentially, every molecule of MIBG has a radioactive iodine (iodine-131) on it. It gets absorbed where you want it to, it irradiates where you want it to and then it decays,” Hunter said.
While a form of MIBG has been used for years, one of the main stumbling blocks has been to find a method to produce MIBG in which every molecule carries the radioactive isotope. The Hunter lab developed a specific resin that would hold the precursor to the radioactive material until ready to be converted into the radiopharmaceutical for use by the body.
“There were very few companies in the world that specialize in radiopharmaceuticals. It’s highly specialized work,” Hunter said.
WORLDiscoveries, the technology transfer office for Western University, located in London, Ontario, helped Hunter apply for patents and coordinated license agreements with Molecular Insight and later Progenics Pharmaceuticals.
At the eleventh hour, Molecular Insight, a Boston-based company, picked up the license on the patent and began development, and then clinical trials.
It is a process that requires a lot of resources, and when Molecular Insight couldn’t stay financially afloat, it appeared as if the project might be over before its time. In stepped Progenics Pharmaceuticals, which secured the license and rescued the research, resuming clinical trials at several specialized centers in the US. Progenics’ results confirmed the effects and benefits of the pharmaceutical, now named Azedra (iobenguane 131).

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By the time Edward Breitschwerdt was in 9th grade, he knew he wanted to become a veterinarian. After turning that childhood dream into a degree, Breitschwerdt, D.V.M., expected to spend his career taking care of the local animals in Maryland, where he had grown up on a small farm. Instead, he has dedicated years to teaching young veterinarians, practicing internal medicine and performing infectious disease research that has implications for global health. His research has led to a diagnostic test that dramatically improves the detection of Bartonella — a bacteria that infects a range of animals. In humans, Bartonella infection has been documented in patients with a startling range of chronic diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia and multiple sclerosis.

A Microorganism with Many Disguises

Scientists have discovered more than 30 Bartonella species so far, and about half of those cause disease. These bacteria are primarily transmitted by tiny insects like ticks, fleas, lice and biting flies — and also through the bites and scratches of other animals, such as cats (cat scratch fever is one disease example).

Because Bartonella are slow-growing bacteria that hide within cells, they often elude detection. When conventional testing is used on a patient’s blood sample, the result too often is a false negative. Patients can have many common symptoms like persistent headaches, chronic fatigue or muscle pain. “It doesn’t have a signature,” says Anupama Ahuja, Ph.D., licensing associate at North Carolina State University’s Office of Technology Transfer. As  a result, many patients infected by Bartonella are misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all.

The Search for Fertile Ground

In the early 1990s, Breitschwerdt’s research laboratory at North Carolina State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine studied vector-borne infectious diseases like those carried by fleas, ticks or mosquitoes. “As time went on, my research laboratory went from putting 90 percent of effort into other known vector-transmitted organisms to putting 90 percent of our research effort into Bartonella.”

Bartonella are known as fastidious bacteria. Basically, they are picky about where they live, and often need a complex set of nutrients to grow to detectable levels in patient specimens. In 1993, Breitschwerdt isolated the first Bartonella species from a dog with endocarditis (an infection of the heart valve), but subsequently wasn’t able to culture the bacteria from other dogs thought to be infected.

His research lab attempted to culture it using mammalian cell-based media — that’s what microbiologists always did if a type of bacteria was pathogenic for mammals. But Bartonella’s comfort zone seemed to be in insects, the most common carriers of the bacteria. With that in mind, someone suggested a different approach: Instead of using media derived from mammals, why not use insect cells? “No one had ever asked that question in that manner,” says Breitschwerdt. “Those two biochemical compositions — mammals vs. insects — are extremely different.” This novel culture method worked.

With co-inventor Sushama Sontakke, Ph.D. (and support of internal funds from North Carolina State University), Breitschwerdt led the development of BAPGM — shorthand for Bartonella alpha Proteobacteria Growth Medium. It is a medium made to support the growth of insect cells and optimized chemically to enhance growth of Bartonella. Subsequently, Ricardo Maggi, Ph.D., research associate professor at the College of Veterinary Medicine, led efforts to optimize the medium for growing Bartonella and other fastidious bacteria.

Because it significantly improved the detection of Bartonella, BAPGM upended conventional  wisdom that Bartonella didn’t cause a chronic bloodborne infection. Some researchers, like Breitschwerdt, had suspected that Bartonella could remain in patients’ bloodstream for many years. But no one could really prove it, until BAPGM came along. “We are demonstrating that there are individuals with chronic symptoms that are persistently infected with Bartonella in their bloodstream,” he says. “I think the rest of the world is starting to catch on to the fact that could be a big deal.”

Testing the Business Potential

In 1999, North Carolina State University saw that BAPGM filled an unmet need and filed a patent application. Not everyone saw BAPGM’s potential, though. That became clear after Breitschwerdt approached several major diagnostic companies, in an effort to find a corporate partner. Even with his long list of credentials — including his role as former president and subsequently the chairman of the board of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine — he could not convince any companies to invest.

Breitschwerdt had no plans to start a company. But, his oldest son had enrolled in a class that required the development of a business plan as a project. He led a team that featured BAPGM. To turn that plan into reality, Breitschwerdt and his co-founders secured a company inception loan from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. The funding allowed Galaxy Diagnostics Inc., based in Research Triangle Park, N.C., to obtain an exclusive license for the BAPGM technology from North Carolina State University and open its doors in 2009.

“The tech transfer office played an important role in getting the technology patented,” says Amanda Elam, Ph.D., president of Galaxy Diagnostics. “They don’t patent everything … they do their own due diligence.That’s an important step in the process, early on in the innovation.”

The Office of Technology Transfer continues to be involved with the advancement of Galaxy Diagnostics.The company was included in the 2012 inaugural class of NC State Fast 15 program, a venture launch support and mentoring program run by New Venture Services in the Office of Technology Transfer.The program helped Galaxy Diagnostics build connections in the growth capital community.

The test offered by Galaxy Diagnostics is called Bartonella ePCR. The e refers to enrichment — that’s BAPGM’s role, and it’s critical when diagnostically dealing with a slow-growing bacteria like Bartonella. “You’re looking for minute amounts of foreign bacterial DNA in a patient sample,” says Elam. By giving Bartonella more fertile ground to grow, BAPGM increases the chance of identifying the bacteria with the use of PCR (polymerase chain reaction) — a highly sensitive technology that can make millions of copies of a DNA sequence. Previous conventional Bartonella PCR tests only detected about 20 percent of cases. With BAPGM, now 80 percent of infected individuals can be diagnosed.

In 2009, the company launched Bartonella ePCR testing services for the veterinary market.Two years later, it began offering testing services for physicians. The company and its four employees are developing a test kit that could be used in hospitals around the world.

Before they receive a Bartonella diagnosis, patients often see more than a half-dozen medical specialists and can end up with a spectrum of diagnoses, ranging from arthritis to serious neurological problems, like seizures and loss of feeling or motor ability in arms and legs. The symptoms of cat scratch disease (caused by Bartonella henselae) can closely resemble lymphoma. Elam recalls talking with one physician who said the ability to make a cat scratch disease diagnosis meant he could send a patient home with antibiotics, instead of a referral to an oncologist and the possibility of two years of chemotherapy.

Says Breitschwerdt,“Doctors, whether physicians or veterinarians, can’t diagnose and treat what they don’t know exists.” For many years, he has taught veterinary students, interns and internal medicine residents that, “The kindest form of therapy is an accurate diagnosis.”

Identifying More Culprits Behind Chronic Disease

It can take quite a while for the medical importance of a microorganism to gain widespread acceptance. Breitschwerdt points to Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium known to cause most gastric ulcers in people. After that disease association was first proposed by researchers in Australia, it still took many decades to change the belief that ulcers were caused only by stress.

Using BAPGM, ePCR has already enhanced understanding of the scope of Bartonella infection. “With all the case studies they’ve collected and published, I feel like every correct diagnosis is a life changed,” says Ahuja. Symptoms can be debilitating — but it’s not just physical distress that’s alleviated with correct diagnosis. “Many of these patients are already struggling to convince even their physicians that the symptoms are real,” she says. “Even people around them are saying, ‘It’s all in your head.’”

Accurate testing could do more than alleviate patient suffering. It may also have a dramatic effect on healthcare costs. For U.S. rheumatoid arthritis patients alone, some estimates show annual healthcare costs could exceed $8 billion, and costs of other rheumatoid arthritis consequences (such as lost work productivity) were $10 .9 billion. Even if Bartonella only accounted for a small percentage of rheumatoid arthritis cases, it could save the healthcare system a lot of money.

Breitschwerdt readily acknowledges the big “if” in that scenario. The more complex a disease, the less likely a single factor (or bacteria) is solely responsible for the patient’s symptoms. That’s why he emphasizes the need for more research to establish that Bartonella actually causes or contributes to the development of certain chronic diseases. With ePCR, that research is now possible. He also suspects the usefulness of BAPGM may extend beyond Bartonella. “In the future, I think what we will ultimately find that BAPGM is going to allow us to find other bacteria in humans and animals that cause chronic intravascular infections that we didn’t know existed.”

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Cynthia Timms (BSN, RN, CWOCN), a nurse at Emory Healthcare in the Wound Ostomy and Continence Nursing (WOCN) Department in Atlanta, GA, ended up with an ostomy in her twenties due to Crohn’s disease. As a result of her experience of the anxiety about the smell when the ostomy is emptied, Cynthia, her spouse Greg, and her partners, Ronny Bracken and George Cavagnaro, came up with the Be Free™ odor-eliminating system.

An ostomy is an opening on the abdomen (called a stoma) that brings the intestine out through the abdominal wall, allowing waste to leave the body and collect in a disposable pouch attached to the skin. Although this is often a life-saving intervention that allows ostomates to lead healthier and more productive lives, it still comes with a cost.
 
 
 Timms recalled that she always tried to avoid her classmates at school because of that anxiety. As a result, she was determined to help herself as well as other ostomates better adjust to the lifestyle with an ostomy, and the most important step was to effectively eliminate the disturbing odor.

Although there are liquid deodorizers on the market today, their effects are usually short-lived, and they are inconvenient to use. Ostomates must reapply them many times throughout the day, forcing them to carry liquid deodorizers wherever they go.

The Be Free system consists of an absorbent pod impregnated with a deodorant. The pod is suspended in the pouch by way of a plastic tail, which is held in place by the pouch’s adhesive barrier, allowing it to remain in use for as long as the ostomate wears the pouch. The pod’s odor elimination properties are further enhanced by the application of the team’s liquid deodorant twice daily, or as needed. It also eliminates the need for ostomates to carry deodorants everywhere. 
  Timms is the biggest user of the Be Free™ system, as well as its biggest beneficiary. She no longer avoids people at work or in social situations and is eager to share the liberation she has achieved with others.
 
“It's been a process coming from being really afraid to empty my pouch in public to now, thirty years later, having a solution for that and wanting to share my solution with everybody,” Timms said. 
 
The Emory University Tech Transfer Office funded the refinement of the technology’s design through its proof-of-concept fund. The office also worked with the inventor to secure funding from the state organization Georgia Research Alliance. Finally, the office has supported her in the creation of a start-up company for this technology.

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This story was originally published in 2020.

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The humanitarian crisis in the Darfur region of western Sudan has displaced nearly 2.3 million people. While many of these individuals live within the safe confines of refugee camps, they are not always out of harm’s way.

Women must venture outside camps to collect firewood to cook for their families. The sudden and drastic increase of people relying on the camps’ surrounding land has taken a toll on the environment.Deforestation has left the area surrounding camps barren, and the lack of firewood causes more than 50 percent of families to miss one or more meals a week. As women spend more time outside of the camps in search of wood (a typical trip can last up to seven hours), they put themselves at risk of being raped or subjected to genital mutilation by the Janjaweed militia.

When Dr. Ashok Gadgil, Senior Scientist and Group Leader for the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was contacted by an officer of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to help refugees in Darfur, he knew little about the daily lives of refugees and wondered how a group of scientists could help better their lives.

The initial USAID proposal was to develop a compactor to turn sun-dried kitchen waste into a fuel source. On his first trip to Darfur, Gadgil concluded that there was not enough kitchen waste to provide an adequate fuel source for cooking fires. He did note that refugees cooked over three-stone fires, which transfer just five percent of heat to food.

This inefficient cooking method inspired Gadgil to develop a field test in Darfur to study the efficiency of various cooking stove designs.

Researchers assessed the factors of cooking in Darfur. They worked closely with women, taking note of what they liked and didn’t like about each stove in the trial. Other factors they considered included the size and shape of the pots used, how the stove was manned and the cooking environment-either outdoors, in close proximity to neighbors, or inside refugees’ small shelters.

The team also took note of the types of food cooked. One of the staple foods of Darfur is assida, a bread that is cooked in a pot and must be continuously stirred. As the assida cooks, it becomes viscous and requires the cook to use the leverage of the pot to stir-stability is crucial to ensure the pot and stove do not tip over. Mulah is a sauce served with the assida. Cooks must fry onions, a cooking technique that requires a higher heat output from the fire than other techniques such as boiling water.

Back in the United States, Gadgil and students at the University of California, Berkeley designed a stove that would address the specific needs of refugees in Darfur. The resulting Berkeley-Darfur Stove is four times more efficient than a three-stone fire and features customized engineering to benefit the refugees.

A tapered wind collar increases fuel-efficiency in the gusty Darfur environment and allows for multiple size pots. Wooden  handles allow for the stove to be handled while hot. Metal tabs accommodate a flat plate to bake bread. Internal ridges create the optimum space between the stove and pot for maximum fuel efficiency. Feet provide stability, and optional rods can be pounded into the earth for more stability. Nonaligned air openings between the outer stove and inner firebox prevent too much airflow, and a small firebox opening prevents cooks from using more fuel wood than necessary.

The design also minimizes the changes required of the refugees. It allows them to prepare the same kinds of food as before in the same amount of time, something not guaranteed by other options such as solar stoves. With the design in place, the next step was to devise a plan to produce and distribute the stoves. The Berkeley group partnered with the San Francisco Professionals Chapter of Engineers Without Borders to develop a manufacturing system with Darfur’s infrastructure in mind. Led by Ken Chow, this group of engineers revisited the stove design to make it simpler to build by reducing the number of parts and streamlining the assembly without compromising the design of the stove.

The Berkeley-Darfur Stove is metal, instead of clay, because metal provided better quality control when producing mass quantities. Sheet metal is stamped and cut to the exact dimensions shown to provide the most efficiency.

These flat kits are shipped to Darfur and assembled by local workers. In cooperation with CHF International, a pilot production facility has been set up in Darfur. The facility currently produces between 200 and 500 stoves per month, not nearly enough to provide for the estimated 400,000 stoves needed. The facility is currently working to increase production by increasing days of operation and adding a second shift. The project hopes to open more facilities in the future.

The manufacturing sites will create new jobs in Darfur, just one of the economic benefits of the Darfur Stoves Project. Families who use the stove will save $250 a year on firewood. Women will spend less time looking for firewood and will be able to pursue entrepreneurial activities such as weaving mats. An influx of money to the Darfur economy will improve the living conditions of refugees. Each stove costs $25. Since this is an outrageous amount for refugees to pay, international nongovernmental agencies underwrite the stoves.

Amy Callis, Executive Director of the Darfur Stoves Project, works with organizations such as The Hunger Site to distribute the stoves and provide training to ensure the most efficient cooking. There has already been a high demand for the stoves. During a three-week trial, 50 stoves were distributed and assessed. After the study, the stoves were offered for sale, and each one was bought.

This successful program could not have been possible without the collaboration of experts from various fields—Gadgil and his scientific team, Chow and his engineers and Callis’ networking and communication skills. The project was executed almost entirely by volunteers. Each had their own specialty and none worked exclusively.

“We’re doing what we can to relieve them from suffering, but the humanitarian crisis is extreme,” said Chow. “The stoves will improve the situation but will not be an answer to the crisis.” For more information visit www.darfurstoves.org.
 

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Using a proprietary growing method developed at Washington State University (WSU), start-up company Phytelligence is producing plants and trees faster than ever, offering a fresh alternative to tree farmers in an industry overripe for innovation.

The company’s soil-less multiplication system — which requires less water and no pesticides — combined with genetic analysis services to ensure the identity of tree species offers tree farmers a way to improve profitability and reduce their environmental impact.

“The company’s plant multiplication method can produce 250,000 plants in one year from a single plant in five-week intervals,” says Preeti Malik-Kale, Ph.D., Technology Licensing Associate in WSU’s Office of Commercialization. “DNA testing prior to shipment guarantees the authenticity of the fruit tree or plant species being supplied to growers.”

Tree Growing 101

Most trees are not grown from seed, but rather grafted on rootstocks — the root system and about 18” of tree stem — that are traditionally propagated in the ground at specialty nurseries. Once the rootstock is large enough, a branch from another tree representing a commercial plant variety (called a scion) selected for its fruit or another attribute is then inserted — or grafted — into the woody stem of the rootstock. After one or two years of growing time, the tree is uprooted and shipped to an orchard, where it takes an additional two to three years before the tree bears fruit.

“Nurseries are confined by the amount of land they have to grow with; 100 acres is a lot. It’s a limiting factor and [space for new trees] only opens up every two to three years,” says Dhingra.

Dhingra says traditional tree propagation is lengthy and rife with inefficiency: About 10 to 40 percent of rootstocks may eventually die, and 10 to 20 percent are not even the variety ordered — a nasty surprise that may come to light years after planting forcing the farmer to rip out trees from random spots in an orchard.

“This results in millions of dollars of loss to the industry,” Dhingra told attendees at a TEDxWSU event in 2014. “It’s a commonly accepted norm.”

Indian-Born Botanist

Dhingra had an affinity for plants at an early age, but growing up in India furthered his resolve to work in agriculture and plant sciences.

“There were food shortages in the early ‘80s in India and seeing people dying from famine made a big impression on me,” he says.

He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in botany in India followed by a doctorate in plant molecular biology from University of Delhi, India, and Rutgers University, New Jersey in 2000. Before joining WSU, he worked as a researcher at Rutgers, the University of Central Florida and University of Florida.

“From 1994 to 2015 my work has been in the broad area of photosynthesis, trying to change how plants grow and to produce them faster,” he says.

When Dhingra joined WSU in 2006, there was little gene-based information on apples, pears and cherries, so he mapped the genome of each in collaboration with colleagues from Chile and Europe.

“I was like a kid in a candy store; the field was wide open,” he says.

Meeting Farmers

Dhingra also traversed the states of Washington, Oregon and California — top producers of apples, cherries, raspberries and grapes — which gave him a better understanding of the problems faced by nurseries, farmers and fruit packagers.

“There were common themes everywhere,” he says. “Farmers would tell me they were waiting for a million plants and they’d maybe get 10,000.”

Neither traditional propagation nor a newer alternative called plant tissue culture or micropropagation were able to meet the demand for rootstocks. In micropropagation, cultivation occurs not in soil but in the laboratory, where a small amount of tree tissue (called an explant) is added to a sterile container filled with a gel-based mixture of nutrients and placed under artificial light.

“Apple trees multiply in soil slowly, and tissue culture wasn’t efficient because they were using a one-size-fits-all approach,” he says. “A lot of tissue culture labs were using compounds formulated for tobacco. I knew that wouldn’t work, so I began developing my own formulations.”

Growing Formulations

Dhingra and students in his horticultural genomics laboratory went to work experimenting with different compounds in agar-based media in which explants of various plant species would quickly multiply.

“I was fortunate to have students who were open to a city kid from New Delhi who told them to come along with him and meet with farmers and who wanted to have a practical impact beyond learning,” he says.

Tyson Koepke was just beginning his doctoral work in Dhingra’s lab in 2007 when he was asked to work on a growing medium for sweet cherries alongside other graduate and doctoral students assigned to different plants. Five-and-a-half years later, the group had perfected four media packages and growing processes for apple, pear, cherry and grape species, each of which included specially customized compounds for four growth stages.

During each five-week growing period, explants multiply three- to five-fold and are divided and placed into containers with a new mix of customized nutrients. After several months in a carefully controlled laboratory environment, the plants are moved to a greenhouse where they continue growing for approximately 4-6 months.

“There are other tissue culture labs out there, but [our] group figured out how to make cultures more viable and developed protocols for growing higher quality plants,” says Koepke.

Going Commercial

When a pair of undergraduate students suggested that Dhingra explore commercializing the multiplication method, he met with representatives of WSU’s Office of Commercialization to discuss the intellectual property management and commercialization plan. Because the growing compounds developed in Dhingra’s lab were essentially recipes, the Office decided to classify the intellectual property as trade secrets.

In 2012, Dhingra, four students and a laboratory manager founded Phytelligence — the first plant-focused biotechnology startup to come out of the university — and licensed the media packages and protocols as well as the software for verifying plant identity through high-resolution genetic analysis.

“When we started the company, it wasn’t just me, it was a group of co-founders,” says Dhingra, who now serves as CEO of Phytelligence. “It changed the paradigm on campus because this was the first group of graduate students to start a company in plant science. It has become motivation for other Ph.D. students to form companies.”

WSU’s Office of Commercialization also connected Dhingra with experts who could help draft a business plan as well as potential investors — 70 percent of the company’s $1 million in start-up funding came from Washington growers and nurseries.

From Researcher to Entrepreneur

Two weeks after Koepke completed his doctorate, he became the director of operations at Phytelligence and began outfitting the lab and building the company’s team, which has grown from three full-time employees in early 2014 to 24 employees today.

After shipping 110,000 plants last year, the company is on track to deliver up to 300,000 plants in 2015. In addition to performing genetic testing on each plant it produces to ensure the rootstocks are true to type, Phytelligence also offers genetic analysis services to farmers and nurseries.

“Because of our genome sequencing and analysis expertise, we know how to assure each plant is true to type so it doesn’t have to be dug out of the ground and present a problem to a farmer a few years later,” says Dhingra.

Koepke says the company has also been able to achieve propagation rates that are in some cases two to five times faster than those of competing tissue culture labs.

“We’re able to improve the business cycle for the average apple farmer,” says Dhingra. “They get trees to plant one to two years after ordering, 95 percent survive and all rootstocks are as ordered, resulting in 20 percent extra income annually for the farmer.”

In addition to benefitting tree farmers, the Phytelligence multiplication system has significant environmental benefits: The process requires no insecticides, pesticides or fungicides and, compared to traditional propagation, uses 50 to 80 gallons less water per tree produced.

Fruits to Nuts to Forests

Phytelligence is now exploring ways to expand, including franchising or establishing partnerships with other tissue culture labs. Long-term, the company hopes to apply its soil-free multiplication technology to citrus trees, nuts and forestry. In addition to introducing a new media package for raspberry plants, the company continues to research growing compounds for other plant species.

“There’s an art and science to developing superior formulations, and we have to work all the time at improving, and now we have the engine doing that,” says Dhingra. “We’ve just started scraping the surface of how to improve growing trees.  The secret is to keep on innovating and leading the field with cutting-edge research.”

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Michael Davidson, of the FSU Magnetic Laboratory, created images of mixed drinks photographed using a light microscope and polarized light. The photo galleries of the pictures were first used by Stonehenge Inc in NYC, a NeckTie business, to create and sell a cocktail collection of silk Neckties. These ties were trademark branded by Stonehenge with the images copyright protected by FSU.

What emerged was Lester Hutt, a young Tallahassee entrepreneur who used the cocktail gallery of images and created a series of drink related products — wall art as well as a line of women's beach clothing accessories and men's clothing accessories.

 

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In a hospital birthing suite, a mother’s labors are rewarded, and a new life enters the world. But the baby appears to be severely bruised, almost as if it had been beaten in the womb. How could this have happened?

In another hospital, a cancer patient who has received multiple transfusions shows a dangerously low platelet count. He receives yet another platelet transfusion. Hours later the platelet count remains seriously depleted, despite the transfusion. The new platelets seem to have mysteriously disappeared. Where did they go?

Both the newborn and the cancer patient are examples of immune-related platelet disorders. Almost everyone knows that humans have different ABO blood types and that, before transfusion, blood must be properly matched between donor and recipient to prevent serious complications. Few, however, are aware that platelets — the little disks in the blood that are essential for clotting — also have "types" that, when mismatched, can produce immune reactions such as those seen in the newborn and the cancer patient.

The newborn that appeared to be bruised is bleeding beneath the skin. That is caused by a low platelet count resulting from a mismatch between the platelet types of the mother and father. The medical term for this condition is neonatal alloimmune thrombocytopenia or NATP. According to the BloodCenter of Wisconsin, in the United States about 3,000 babies are born each year with NATP, which can result in bruising, intracranial bleeding and, in some cases, death.

In the case of the cancer patient, the newly transfused platelets are disappearing because the body’s immune system is attacking them because of a mismatch of platelet types. About 10 million platelet transfusions are given each year in the United States. No one knows for sure how often immune problems resulting from transfusion mismatches may occur.

The Road to Finding out "Why"

When doctors first saw what happened to the ‘bruised" newborn and the cancer patient with disappearing platelets, they were puzzled. "The antigens that cause blood types have been recognized for almost 100 years, but for many years nothing was known about platelet types," says Richard Aster, M.D., professor of medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin and senior investigator at the BloodCenter of Wisconsin’s Blood Research Institute. "Typing platelets didn’t become important until people began transfusing platelets in the 1950s and 60s."

Over the years, a team of researchers at the Blood Research Institute would identify a number of platelet antigens critical to patient health. "I got involved at the very beginning," Aster says, "when we were defining platelet antigens using antibodies identified in individual patients."

Later, Aster and Peter J. Newman, Ph.D., now vice president for research at the BloodCenter of Wisconsin and associate director of the Blood Research Institute, would identify the molecular basis for various platelet antigens. "We were able to identify the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) that creates individual antigens. Knowing that opens the door to a fast, accurate test for platelet typing," Newman says. "It’s a little like knowing which key opens which lock."

What was needed now was a fast, convenient way of executing such a test.

The Genesis of the BioArray BeadChip

In the early 1990s, researchers in New Jersey had the germ of a concept for such a test. The idea was to make a beadchip for complex nucleic acid and protein analysis. After some patents were filed on the concept and Small Business Innovation Research funding was secured, BioArray Solutions was formed. The company would eventually be acquired by Immucor in 2009, but much work had to be completed.

"To make the BeadChip work, many novel elements had to be developed in-house," says Sukanta Banerjee, senior director of research and development at BioArray. "This includes software for reading the chips, an associated microscope for examining the BeadChips and an entire system for manufacturing an array of BeadChips bonded to glass slides. None of these elements, with the exception of the microscope, which we heavily customize—can be bought off the shelf."

Banerjee adds that while they were developing the technology for the complete system that comprises the BioArray BeadChip, there was a question constantly in the back of their minds: "There are lots of things that the BeadChip could test for, but where is there a demand for a platform like this? The answer was in blood. Now we have separate BeadChips for detailed analysis and typing of red blood cells, platelets and white blood cells."

To make their Human Platelet Antigen (HPA) BeadChip work, BioArray licensed the markers for human platelet antigens from the BloodCenter of Wisconsin.

Transferring the Technology

"In 2006, BioArray Solutions approached the BloodCenter of Wisconsin. We had a meeting in which BioArray explained what their base technology was and how it worked," says Laura Savatski, technology transfer officer for the BloodCenter of Wisconsin’s Blood Research Institute. "They were interested in licensing our Human Platelet Antigens and in collaborating on samples that would give them access to positive controls to confirm that their system was working."

Savatski notes that while the agreement was executed in 2006, it took a couple of years to get the final product working and market-ready. "Now sales are growing, and we are getting royalties," she says, "which have actually taken off in the past two years."

Putting it All Together

At the heart of the BioArray BeadChip system are tiny silicon chips that measure just 300 micrometers by 300 micrometers, smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. Hard to see with the naked eye, 96 BeadChips fit on a glass slide, which means that 96 different samples can be tested at once. Each of the 96 BeadChips is seeded with 4,000 microparticle "probes" for detecting the various Human Platelet Antigens.

The sample to be tested is prepared by taking whole blood from the person to be analyzed, extracting genomic DNA from it and performing PCR (polymerase chain reaction) amplification for the target areas of interest. The sample is put onto an individual BeadChip, and when there is a match between the sample DNA and the BeadChip, there is a fluorescent reaction, which can be seen and analyzed using a special microscope and software that is part of the BeadChip system. The entire test, including sample preparation, takes place within a single work shift and shortens the process of typing platelets by more than two days.

According to Banerjee, the BeadChip is widely used in Europe and is considered the test of record there for platelet typing. The BeadChip currently is available for research use only in the United States.

Aster says, "From our viewpoint, the key benefit of the BioArray BeadChip is that it can be used to type large numbers of donors to create prescreened and typed platelet units.

"So when a baby with NATP or a cancer patient with the low platelet count needs a transfusion, we can give them platelets without fear of adverse reactions."

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This story was originally published in 2012.

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Throughout history, human migration has contributed greatly to the spread of infectious diseases. Trade caravans, religious pilgrimages and military maneuvers spread many diseases such as influenza, plague and smallpox.

This increased international mobility has created the potential for a serious and costly health crisis, prompting world health authorities to seek rapid, high-throughput disease surveillance and reporting programs as a first line of defense. A solution needs to identify, manage and contain highly communicable infectious diseases such as tuberculosis (TB), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis, influenza and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

Infectious diseases can be separately diagnosed with existing highly effective gold-standard diagnostic tests such as culture and/or polymerase chain reaction (PCR). But, the most sensitive and accurate tests conducted in clinical labs usually take days to provide an answer, while the very rapid tests that require only a few minutes are usually less sensitive and inaccurate.

Performing individual tests for each of these diseases at a reasonable cost, though, creates formidable logistical and financial challenges. A more innovative solution that cuts down the number of tests is needed.

Next Generation Disease Screening

One possible solution that shows great promise is a high-throughput diagnostic system, which is commercially available from Akonni Biosystems, a private molecular diagnostic company based in Frederick, Md. Called TruSentry, the system can extract DNA and/or RNA directly from either a tiny spot of dried blood or whole blood and then subject the single sample to testing for 10 to 20 of the most prevalent diseases at the same time. Results are available in less than five hours — fast enough to allow the analysis of thousands of samples per day.

The TruSentry diagnostic system can also be deployed in a single national reference lab, processing millions of samples per year or as part of a larger network of separate satellite facilities that are at, or closer to, the point where samples are collected. Other configurations can be deployed remotely in the field, for example, at the point of an infectious disease outbreak.

At the heart of the TruSentry system is nanoscale biosensor technology on three dimensional gel-drops licensed from Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. Known as a biochip, this high-throughput form resembles a 96-well microtiter plate but in a 1 centimeter by 1 centimeter area that contains several dozen to several hundred “dots” or small drops. These biochips also are available in a microscope slide-size format for use in point of care settings. Each serves as a miniature laboratory with a unique protein, antibody or nucleic acid that will attach to a particular DNA sequence or antigen to identify infectious diseases such as TB, multidrug-resistant TB, HIV, viral hepatitis B, hepatitis C, syphilis and influenza.

“What Akonni has been able to do with the innovations licensed from Argonne is a very fascinating success story,” says Yash Vaishnav, Ph.D., M.B.A, senior manager, intellectual property development and commercialization, Division of Technology Development and Commercialization (TDC), at Argonne National Laboratory. “It illustrates what can happen when innovative technologies, developed by two international research facilities, with cultural and geopolitical differences, fit well together, and a technology transfer office and licensee work together to overcome challenges.”

International Collaboration Leads to Biochip

The special nanoscale biosensor technology is the result of an international research collaboration originally started in 1988 by the late Professor Andrei Mirzabekov, Ph.D., and his team at the Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology in Moscow and subsequently advanced via a joint research agreement in 1995 with Argonne National Laboratory. Argonne is one of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) oldest and largest national laboratories for science and engineering research.

One of the many inventors who worked on developing this innovative technology is Daniel Schabacker, Ph.D., team leader, Bio-Detection Technologies at Argonne, where he is the lead scientist for the development of the biochip portfolio. Schabacker helped develop the technology for manufacturing the biochips in a commercial setting.

“When I joined the Argonne team, many aspects of manufacturing and scalability of biochips had not been worked out,” Schabacker says. “It was interesting, with a lot of capabilities, but there was no manufacturing mindset — the manufacturing process needed to be scalable to be commercially viable.

“We really developed a package of standard operating procedures and a cost analysis that showed how our biochips could be marketable and manufactured in a commercial environment. We also transitioned from the original gel-pad concept to gel drops, which increased efficiency and produced a robust product.”

Since this international group of researchers started collaborating in 1993, development of the biochip has been supported with $22 million in funding from government and private sponsors — U.S. National Institutes of Health, DOE, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, Centers for Disease Control, Motorola Inc., and Packard Instrument Co.

The Argonne National Laboratory biochip point-of-care diagnostic portfolio contains 29 issued U.S. patents with six pending applications, and the Argonne TDC has granted three exclusive licenses with defined fields of use to:

• Safeguard Biosystems — focusing on veterinary diagnostics
• Aurora Photonics — developing biochip imager for research and diagnostics
• Akonni Biosystems — developing human diagnostics

Innovations Licensed to Startup

Akonni first approached the Argonne TDC in 2003 after hearing Mirzabekov talk about detecting TB in human samples. As a startup biotech company, Akonni wanted to license the strong portfolio of intellectual property relating to this innovative microarray technology to raise funds.

After submitting a business plan and completing a licensing questionnaire, Argonne worked with Akonni to identify key patents and exercise an option agreement to negotiate a license prior to the request for seed funding. After the funding was obtained, they entered into license negotiations.

Argonne’s Vaishnav says the first exclusive license included biochips for TB and a few other infectious diseases, a reasonable upfront fee and royalty rates, and due diligences based on sales and commercialization activity. As the relationship matured, it became clear to both that they needed a more dynamic agreement beyond standard licensing. The result was a collaborative research approach with the guidelines that allowed for advancing the technology and developing prototype applications of the biochip.

Over the years, many of them filled with time-consuming processes and difficult challenges, Vaishnav says both parties took a flexible approach that resulted in the agreements to evolve so they could overcome risks, attract more investors and collaborators, and take advantage of growth opportunities.

Today, the relationship is guided by a fine-tuned license that includes an equity stake for Argonne in Akonni and a cooperative research and development agreement. The result is a successful relationship: So successful, in fact, that former Argonne staff, including a key biochip researcher, have joined Akonni, and both entities are working constructively with others to bring the technology to the marketplace.

“This technology adds a molecular diagnostic solution where the current technology, while good, simply can’t perform,” says Kevin Banks, vice president of sales and marketing at Akonni Biosystems. Unlike today’s real-time PCR-based platforms, the Akonni TruSentry system, Banks says, can rapidly screen a sample for hundreds of disease markers at one time by using hundreds of molecular biosensors in a microarray the size of a fingernail thanks to all the work, not only at Argonne and Akonni, but the original research started by Mirzabekov and his team.

Akonni, which is deploying the technology in both point-of-care and high throughput screening settings, is in the process of attaining U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for its diagnostic tests. Banks says this is a major milestone on the road to clinical trials and eventual clearance to market it as a commercially available diagnostic system.

“At the end of the day, what we have developed together is a third-generation molecular diagnostic solution that can provide truly accurate and trusted results, combined with alert detection and reporting on the world’s most prevalent and dangerous infectious diseases,” Banks says. “It represents the future of molecular diagnostics — a rapid, cost effective diagnostic system can greatly help immigration and health care officials identify and slow the spread of potentially dangerous diseases and would benefit all people.”

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This story was originally published in 2010.

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“Brain injury occurs more frequently than breast cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injury,” remarks Allan I. Bergman, president and chief executive officer of the Brain Injury Association.

Standard treatment to prevent brain injury caused by pressure on the brain following stroke or trauma involves drilling burr holes into the skull to relieve pressure. Typically the holes are closed with a titanium plate or bone grafts. These approaches each have drawbacks. The use of a titanium in either mesh or plate form can be expensive, and bone grafts are difficult to perform, painful and prone to infection. Each of these techniques can lead to deformity of the skull curvature.

A team of doctors and engineers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the National University Hospital, collaborating with Temasek Polytechnic, saw the need for something better. Inventors Swee Hin Teoh, Dietmar Hutmacher, Kim Cheng Tan, Kock Fye Tam and Iwan Ziein developed a biocompatible polycapolactone polymer-based implant for the burr holes that provides a base for the bone of the skull to regenerate after repair at half the cost of a titanium mesh or plate. The invention is currently licensed to Osteopore International Pte Ltd., a NUS spinoff.

The technology works by rapid prototyping and design of a 3D patient-specific burr plug. It uses fused deposition modeling and enables the fabrication of the exact shape needed for the patient without a mold. This invention has received support from various organizations, including the Ministry of Education, the National Medical Research Council and the Tote Board.

One of the first patients treated was a 23-year-old man who suffered an injury on the job. The engineering team fashioned a precise scaffold infusing some of his living bone cells into the scaffold to “seed” the growth process. The bone plug has achieved wonderful results, and two years later the scaffold has fused with the surrounding tissue, with no trace of the original hole. His hair has even grown back.

Teoh indicated in the Far Eastern Economic Review (Oct. 21, 2004) that this new technology might be used in developing countries, where medical imaging equipment is scarce, causing doctors to drill multiple holes in a patient’s skull before they may find the correct entry point. Other anticipated applications for this technology include treatment of patients with facial injuries and uses in cardiovascular, orthopedic and dental treatment. 

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

Composite materials, such as particleboard, fiberglass and carbon-fiber products, are held together with a moldable glue or resin. Unfortunately, most glues are not safe for the environment, are not biodegradable, and are often toxic.

Many of the polymers used in composites are petroleum-based — a nonrenewable, high cost resource. Engineered wood products also contain formaldehyde, a known carcinogen that degasses slowly over time, creating indoor air quality problems. Huge amounts of engineered wood products are thrown into landfills every year, both from tear-downs and new construction projects.

Scientists at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., have invented an alternative to standard composite materials — biodegradable composites made entirely from plant materials.

Developed by Anil Netravali, a professor of fiber science and apparel design at Cornell University, the process binds together renewable fibers from fast-growing plants with a proprietary soy protein-based resin. This material is then processed into sheets. Many of these fibers, such as bamboo, kenaf, and flax, can be grown on marginal or unused farmlands. Other advantages include a high strength-to-weight ratio, no petrochemical content, and lower overall cost compared to traditional composite materials.

e2e Materials LLC, an Ithaca company founded on this new technology, is developing biodegradable composites with a wide range of strength properties, reaching as high as midrange steels, for different industries and applications. Biodegradable composites manufactured by e2e Materials are currently being used in skateboard decks and office furniture. The company is also developing advanced composites that are stronger than steel but almost six times lighter, which will be suitable for a variety of structural applications, such as I-beams.

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

People get tattoos for lots of reasons that seem great at the time — but as life and love change, tattoos, especially if they are highly visible, may cause problems. Removing a tattoo can be painful and expensive and may lead to permanent skin damage and scarring. But that doesn’t have to be the case.

Rox Anderson, M.D., of Massachusetts General Hospital’s Wellman Center of Photomedicine, became interested in the chemistry of tattoo ink when one of his patients developed a severe reaction to a permanent tattoo. After several years of research, Anderson invented microencapsulated biodegradable and bio-absorbable dyes within safe, colorless polymer beads. The dyes are made from natural pigments and enclosed in tiny beads several microns in diameter, which are injected under the skin. To remove the tattoo, a laser is passed over the tattoo, which ruptures the beads and releases the inks, which are then safely absorbed by the body.

This technology is licensed to Freedom-2 Inc., a startup company founded in 1999 by Anderson to commercialize biodegradable Freedom-2™ tattoo inks. The company is continuing to research and develop new engineered ink products using well-established, safe, biocompatible materials that provide both high-quality art and easy removability.

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.

Eggplant is an essential crop in many tropical countries around the world, including India  and the Philippines. However, eggplant fields are often attacked by the eggplant fruit and shoot borer (EFSB), an insect that can causes widespread crop damage. These losses hurt the food supply chain, as well as the regional economies where eggplant is a staple food source. They also force farmers to spread expensive chemical pesticides, to which the EFSB is gradually becoming resistant. 

In an effort to strengthen crop yields, Cornell University,  Ithaca, N.Y., and Sathguru Management Consultants in India have partnered with a private enterprise Mahyco seed company and a consortium of public research institutions to introduce a bioengineered, EFSB-resistant variety of eggplant to Asia. They coordinated the pro bono use of Monsanto – Mahyco technology, which was licensed to a public/private research and development consortium to develop this new variety of eggplant. The work was funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Agriculture Biotechnology Support Project and the governments of India, Bangladesh and the Philippines.

Monsanto’s insect-resistance technology is based on the cry1Ac protein from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), a soil bacterium. This unique organism produces crystal proteins that are toxic to a variety of insects, including EFSB. The technology bioengineers the cry1Ac gene into the eggplant, creating a hybrid variety with plant leaves that are toxic to EFSB but safe for human consumption. 

Transgenic Bt-hybrid eggplant will be available commercially in India, Bangladesh and the Philippines in 2008.
 

To see available technologies from research institutions, click here to visit the AUTM Innovation Marketplace.