A Baltimore startup that hopes to simplify cornea transplants won the top prize at the second Johns Hopkins University FastForward U Innovation & Entrepreneurship Challenge.
Eyedea Medical competed against 50 other student-run startups to win the grand $30,000 Bisciotti Foundation Prize for Student Entrepreneurship at the competition last month. The company plans to use most of the prize money to manufacture and sell more than 150 of its DescePrep devices to eye banks, or nonprofits that manage the donations of ocular tissue.
DescePrep helps technicians create grafts for a type of partial cornea transplant, which is difficult because the graft is less than .001 inches thick. DescePrep injects liquid between layers of tissue, making it easier for a technician to separate different parts of the cornea for surgery.
“It's very challenging for eye banks to separate that graft from the donated cornea,” founder Katie Solley said.
Eyedea Medical came out of Solley master's thesis research at Johns Hopkins University. Her team was tasked with finding unmet needs for ophthalmology, through watching surgeries and conducting research to find gaps in care. Solley found that certain donor tissues from people with conditions such as diabetes are more often challenging to prepare for transplant, with higher failure rates.
"95% of corneal blindness is either preventable or treatable," Solley said. "Yet there are still tens of millions of people on a waiting list."
The company, based out of LaunchPort in Port Covington, is also currently starting development of its second product, which assists in a different type of corneal transplant. Solley, along with Hopkins faculty member Kunal Parikh and cornea surgeon Sudeep Pramanik, founded Eyedea Medical in 2019. Since then, Eyedea has raised around $400,000, including a $225,000 National Science Foundation grant, along with support from the Abell Foundation, the Baltimore Development Corp. and winnings in other business competitions.
The $30,000 given to Eyedea Medical is just part of the total $170,000 FastForward U awarded across five categories.
- Sequoia Neurovitality, which uses a headband to help older adults deal with cognitive decline through promoting deep sleep, came in second place for the Biscotti prize and received $20,000.
- The Summer MedTech Award saw $10,000 given to NurseTech, which helps nurses organize cords and cables; Drul, an at-home diagnostic company; and Visilant, a telemedicine company focusing on blindness.
- Three companies won the Summer Entrepreneurship Award and $10,000: DioTeX, which created a device to quickly detect hemorrhaging; Paths, a social networking app and StetPulse, which created a UVC medical disinfectant.
- The $20,000 Alumni Venture Award went to Common Treat, which creates mushroom powders to support mental health.
- The Thalheimer Graduate Student Award gave $10,000 to four companies: Class Equity, an online platform for K-12 students to build financial literacy; Leaders of Africa, which provides more accessible learning and research opportunities; OvuBrush, a company that developed a smart toothbrush to track the menstrual cycle; and Sia Precision Education, which uses artificial intelligence to improve educational outcomes for incarcerated students.
Matt Hooke covers technology, health care and innovation for the Baltimore Business Journal and Maryland Inno. He can be reached at mhooke@bizjournals.com or 410-454-0504.
