An antibody therapy that could treat ovarian cancer, a real-time sewer flow sensor and a natural crop protection formulation were among the discoveries presented by researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the Medical College of Wisconsin and Marquette University before an audience Thursday at the annual First Look Forum event at the University Club of Milwaukee.
Some of the presenters are researchers aiming to license their discoveries to other companies while some have become entrepreneurs, forming new companies to commercialize their inventions.
A panel of three local entrepreneurship experts provided feedback and questions to each presenter. Those panelists were Wisconsin Center for Technology Commercialization director Idella Yamben; Eli Blee-Goldman, a general partner at the Milwaukee-based venture capital firm Character; and Venture Investors LLC chief financial officer David Arnstein.
The discoveries presented were:
- Novel therapeutic for ovarian cancer: Pradeep Chaluvally-Raghavan of the Medical College of Wisconsin described a targeted antibody therapy jointly developed by researchers at MCW and the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. The therapeutic could potentially diagnose and treat ovarian cancer, which is often lethal, Chaluvally-Raghavan said.
- MegaPerceptron LLC: UW-Milwaukee assistant professor Sandeep Gopalakrishnan is the CEO and co-founder of MegaPerceptron, a mobile app that uses artificial intelligence to automate wound care diagnoses, assess therapy effectiveness and predict healing outcomes. It's aiming to help providers better care for patients with chronic non-healing wounds.
- Venus Rehabilitation Technologies LLC: Sheila Schindler-Ivens of Marquette University is the founder of the company behind CUped, a robotic device designed to help stroke survivors improve mobility. The tool is designed to supplement gait training within existing physical therapy workflows. The startup has a prototype it has tested with more than 30 patients.
- Water Intelligence LLC: Walter McDonald of Marquette University is the chief information officer of Water Intelligence, a startup developing video-based sensors for real-time sewer flow monitoring. The company says its technology is more affordable, requires less maintenance and is more reliable compared with existing technologies.
- Trauma triage mobile app: MCW trauma surgeon Rachel Morris described a mobile application MCW developed with researchers at the University of Minnesota that's designed to help health care systems optimize triage for trauma patients to improve mortality rates and resource utilization. The app uses a predictive model to allocate hospital resources based on the severity of a traumatic industry in less than three minutes.
- Antibody purification: Ionel Popa presented about a new antibody purification method discovered at UWM that could be beneficial for the research tools industry. Purification is a critical step for pharmaceutical companies that are making antibody-based drugs or tests, Popa said, and the new method could help researchers do it more efficiently.
- T3 BioScience LLC: Ching-Hong Yang of UWM is the founder of a startup that's developing natural products to prevent crop diseases. Its first product, RejuAgro, successfully inhibits three devastating crop diseases as effectively as existing antibiotic treatments but without the negative environmental impacts, according to the company. At the end of this year, T3 aims to formally submit the product to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
