Feb 11 2013
An external panel of venture capitalists, entrepreneurs and medical device manufacturers has awarded $100,000 grants to two joint Arizona State University-Mayo Clinic research teams that are working to apply personalized medicine to the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and cerebral aneurysms.
The Center for Individualized Medicine at Mayo Clinic and the Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development (OKED) at Arizona State University joined in sponsoring the awards. More than 20 teams submitted proposals, with the winning teams including:
Development of nanobodies that target amyloid-β oligomers for individual diagnosis in Alzheimer’s disease: Michael Sierks, PhD, School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, Arizona State University; Terrone L. Rosenberry, PhD, and Pritam Das, PhD, both of Department of Neuroscience, Mayo Clinic.
The EndoVantage Interventional Suite (EVIS) for personalized clinical management of cerebral aneurysms: David Frakes, PhD, School of Biological and Health Systems Engineering and School of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering, Arizona State University; Brian Chong, MD, Division of Neuroradiology, Mayo Clinic.
“The Center for Individualized Medicine at Mayo Clinic works to translate research breakthroughs into real-world applications that can improve health care for our patients,” said Jeremy L. Friese, director of New Business and Development in Mayo’s Center for Individualized Medicine. “We’re excited to see this kind of research collaboration be a component of the broader Mayo Clinic partnership with Arizona State University.”
“The quality of applications received for this opportunity reflects the superior quality of use-inspired research activities engaged by ASU and Mayo Clinic researchers in the area of health and personalized medicine,” said Sethuraman “Panch” Panchanathan, senior vice president of ASU’s Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development. “Through this collaborative effort, we are able to rapidly advance commercialization of novel ideas with the potential for significant economic development.”
Arizona Technology Enterprises (AzTE), the technology venturing arm of Arizona State University, is managing the initiative on behalf of ASU.
The competition was open to research pertaining to individualized medicine, broadly defined as “discovering and integrating the latest in genomic, molecular and clinical sciences into personalized care.” Funds can be used for a variety of activities, including prototype development, software or service development, pilot execution, company formation, or research endeavors leading to a commercialization product/ service.