Mario Alvarez; David Dean; Ryan Hooper; Ciro Rodriguez; Grissel Trujillo: Chaotic Lamina
Cell-based therapies, such as bone marrow replacement, novel cancer drug screening techniques, and many regenerative medicine technologies, require donor cells to be expanded from millions to hundreds of millions or billions to treat a single patient. Currently, donor cells are sent to expensive centralized facilities located far from patients for expansion in whole room incubators. The current procedure for cell-based therapies negatively impacts the affordability and the pace of treatment as well as, ultimately, the number of patients who can be treated. A solution is to use a chaotic bioreactor system fabricated using a novel method, chaotic printing. This new bioreactor will allow local, rapid, and less expensive expansion of cells to the numbers needed for treatment.
Emily Daoud; John Hummel: VenoSure
A common complication with electrophysiology procedures is access site hematoma/bleeding, in part related to multiple access sites, use of anticoagulants and inexperienced staff managing recovery. Current products leave a hemostatic material in the vein, cannot be altered for varied sheath size and require advanced skillset. A proper venostasis tool would be: easily/safely deployed; achieve hemostasis quickly; use in anticoagulated patients; no costly mechanism or advanced training. The proposed device (VenoSure) will manage any size venous access at a reduced cost without advanced training. This closure method will facilitate earlier patient ambulation and comfort and reduce hospital resources.
Carmen DiGiovine: SitSmart
Individuals using wheelchairs are at significant risk for pressure ulcer development and this risk increases with age, immobility and muscle atrophy. There is a need for a pressure measurement tool that empowers individuals to develop healthy pressure relieving behaviors and reduce the risk of ulcer formation. Sit Smart is an inexpensive portable in-home pressure measurement device that allows individuals to monitor pressure levels and develop healthy behaviors.
Zhiwei Hu: CAR-T_NK v TNBC
Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is typically an incurable malignancy due to lack of targeted therapy. This technology is a group of novel specifically targeted CAR constructs that can alter patients’ own immune cells to effectively fight cancer. The technology is specific to a new target in TNBC, which is clinically validated in other cancers. Outcomes of this technology would benefit the majority of TNBC patients, help prevent recurrences, and have less side effects than current treatments.
Asimina Kiourti and Lisa Militello: Sleep Well Baby Bedding
Sleep-Well Baby Bedding leverages a patented solution to detect and monitor a baby's position during sleep. The remote monitoring system is comprised of conductive threads, non-intrusively situated within an infant’s bedding, triggering an alert to potentially high-risk situations, such as if an infant has rolled face-down or too close to an edge.
Sanjay Krishna: LITE Detector
Co-Inventors: Sri Harsha Kodati, Seunghyun Lee, Wu Lu, Theodore Ronningen, Mariah Schwartz, Vishank Talesara
Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) applications are used for defense, aerospace, and autonomous vehicles. Current LiDAR technologies lack high performance sensors and affordable price points. LIDAR needs to be more sensitive with better response times. This novel technology, Lateral Interband Type-II Engineered (LITE) detectors, will solve these needs by enabling LiDAR systems to see farther and respond faster using a higher performance detector architecture. If LiDAR are the eyes of the driverless car, then the proposed LITE detectors are the photoreceptors.
J. Allen McElroy, Tanya Nocera, Nadi Graham, and Bryan Stewart:HDO Health
HDO Health is a medical device portfolio company dedicated to bringing life-saving technologies to the world that help prevent people from bleeding to death. Our core values are to be Heart-led, Data-driven, and Outcome-focused. We aim to provide the world with the most effective, affordable, and easy-to-use junctional tourniquet to help prevent people who have suffered a junctional wound from bleeding to death. The HDO Health Junctional Tourniquet (“The Journiquet”) is a novel, class II medical device that innovates on current junctional tourniquet products to stop bleeding more quickly and effectively in hard-to-reach and treat junctional regions.
Michael Tweedle: Cell Penetrating Peptides
Co-Inventors: Li Gong, Shankaran Kothandaraman; Chadwick L Wright
Oncologic surgeons use imaging to plan surgery but only their vision and touch guide them during surgery, resulting in deadly missed tumors. Oncologists then treat half of all cancer patients with platinum chemotherapy, but with dose-limiting side effects in 25% of patients, resulting in many failures. This technology uses proprietary pharmaceuticals that transiently permeabilize tumor cell membranes, making a real time cancer specific imaging agent that will increase the accuracy of cancer surgery. A platinum chemotherapy potentiator will make chemotherapy drugs more effective in late stage cancer patients and allow patients to remain in therapeutic range, solving both problems.
Kai Zhao: Nasal Aid
Co-Inventors: Kanghyun Kim
Nasal obstruction is a chronic medical condition where invasive surgery is the only permanent solution. Patients experience decreased quality of life and loss of productivity. There is a lack of products based on scientific evidence that specially address the issue. This invention is a novel nasal aid designed to relieve nasal obstruction symptoms and to be sold over-the-counter. It redirects nasal airflow to targeted therapeutic regions, which preliminary clinical data shows relieves nasal obstruction, potentially benefitting some 30 million adults in the US with related symptoms.