Devices & Diagnostics, Pharma, Startups

Breast Cancer Startup Challenge taps university teams to move 10 NIH discoveries off the shelf and into the clinic

The National Institutes of Health has quite a bit of patented work sitting on the […]

The National Institutes of Health has quite a bit of patented work sitting on the shelf and not enough biotech companies willing or able to take on the risk of trying to commercialize them.

Universities, meanwhile, have lots of motivated and engaged students and faculty eager to get some experience with real-world research projects and ventures.

An innovative startup challenge is pairing the two parties together in an attempt to bring new breast cancer treatments and diagnostics to market.

The Breast Cancer Startup Challenge just announced 10 teams from the U.S. and Europe who will claim a $5,000 prize and advance to the final stage of the challenge in which they’re encourage to form a company around one of the technologies.

It’s an interesting model: The Center for Advancing Innovation helped NIH pick nine projects with the strongest commercial viability (an additional invention came from a university-based Avon Foundation grantee). Then, with help from the Avon Foundation, they called on university students and faculty, as well as entrepreneurs, to develop business plans for the technologies.

The 10 selected projects include therapeutics, diagnostics, one vaccine and a health IT product. One diagnostic, for example, would map the spatial organization of genes in a cell’s nucleus to distinguish cancer cells from normal cells. Another would use the protein kinase pAkt as a predictive marker of whether a certain kind of chemotherapy would likely be effective in an individual patient.

More than 40 teams formed at universities around the globe to submit business plans for one of the 10 technologies. Each was required to include an established entrepreneur and at least one member with legal, medical and business expertise. Those teams crafted 10-page business plans and pitches for the invention of their choosing, which were judged by a panel of pharmaceutical, CRO and nonprofit executives.

One winner for each technology was chosen and announced this week.

Now the teams are being encouraged to take the next steps of incorporating a startup, applying for an NIH startup license and applying for a minimum of $100,000 in seed funding from investors who have agreed to participate in the challenge. Those investors include Avalon Ventures and Hatteras Venture Partners, among a handful of others, according to the challenge’s website.

A few of the winners have already gotten a jump-start. Cambridge University’s winning team is part of a company called Radial Genomics. And a team of students at Northwestern University have formed Orpheden Therapeutics to develop a personalized immunotherapy for various types of cancer.

It will be interesting to see how many of the teams are able to license the technology and secure outside funding. Those who are successful in doing both will be considered winners and recognized by the challenge in June, so stay tuned.

Shares0
Shares0