Seven UW biotech teams participate in CoMotion Innovator Showcase
The UW School of Medicine selected Dr. James Stout, Professor of Pediatrics and Adjunct Professor of Health Services, as their 2019 Inventor of the Year recipient. Jim is also the creator and head of the Interactive Medical Training Resources (iMTR) group within the Children’s Health Institute at the UW. In addition, he is the inventor of Spirometry 360 ®, a program that trains medical professionals on spirometry, a common office test used to assess lung functions and to diagnose asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and other conditions that affect breathing.
Over a span of 16 years, CoMotion worked with Dr. Stout and his team to develop a licensing strategy that made it possible to provide access to the full range of Spirometry 360’s suite of training resources to test administrators and clinical providers across the U.S. and internationally. Spirometry 360 benefitted by generating license-based revenue. The team also received grants from CoMotion to further develop the Spirometry 360 suite by adding critical technical features to improve user access and broaden dissemination. “CoMotion has given us many opportunities over the years,” said James. “Gail Dykstra, our CoMotion innovation manager at the time, was an advocate, really believed in the work we did, and inspired us to keep after it! We couldn’t have done any of this without Gail and CoMotion’s support.”
The evening also included the CoMotion Innovator Showcase featuring seven up-and-coming biotech innovations by UW researchers. Attendees were able to review project posters and ask researchers questions about their innovation before and after Dr. Stout’s presentation. Later, researchers had one minute to pitch their ideas, and attendees voted on their favorite solution based on how well they communicated their innovation, its potential to become a relevant product, therapy, or service in the marketplace, and the ultimate impact it could have for customers or patients.
First place went to Alyssa Schul, a graduate student in the Department of Bioengineering, for her work on the CREST Male Urethral Catheter Simulator (female version soon to follow). The innovation is a high-fidelity, hyper bio-realistic, patient-specific, male genitourinary system, to be used as a task trainer for the common procedure of urethral catheterization. Alyssa works with Dr. Robert Sweet, professor in UW’s Department of Urology and Director of the WWAMI Institute for Simulation in Healthcare (WISH).
Click here to learn more about how CoMotion helps UW innovators bring their ideas to market.
See below for more about the seven teams participating in CoMotion Innovator Showcase.
Tailormade TX
Tailormade Tx is a computational drug design platform aiming to solve intractable challenges in medicine.
UW DEPTS: Biochemistry, Institute for Protein Design
UW RESEARCHERS: Stephanie Berger, Franziska Seeger, Ta-Yi Yu, and David Baker
VizCath (Synchronized Suction-Injection Catheter)
UW DEPTS: Mechanical Engineering
UW RESEARCHERS: Syed Faisal, Dr. Alberto Aliseda, Dr, Eric Seibel
CathAlign
CathAlign is a fully automated transducer-leveling hemodynamic solution that adjusts the height of the pressure transducer in response to patient movement.
UW DEPTS: Mechanical Engineering
UW RESEARCHERS: Cody Cooper, Shikhar Varshney, Stephen Phillips, Soyoung Kang
DopCuff
DopCuff integrates doppler and automatic cuff technology into a single, easy wearable device that works in the same time as a regular automated cuff.
UW DEPTS: Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Business and Management
UW RESEARCHERS: Katie Maskal, Alex Auld, Ian Johnson, Abdu AlQas, Jared Chirstenson, Dr. Aaron M. Cheng
A Method for Measurement of Retinal Acuity In Vitro
EyeCandy combines a visual stimulus-generating engine with analysis of multielectrode array retinal recordings via a machine learning approach to measure murine retinal acuity (RA) in vitro.
UW DEPTS: Ophthalmology
UW RESEARCHERS: Darwin Babino, Tyler Benster, Laura Laprell, Russell N. Van Gelder
CREST – Urethral Catheter Simulator (Foley project)
The CREST Urethral Catheter Simulator is a high-fidelity, hyper bio realistic, patient specific, male genitourinary system. The simulator is to be used as a task trainer for the common procedure of urethral catheterization.
UW DEPTS: Bioengineering
UW RESEARCHERS: Alyssa Schul, Dr. Robert Sweet, professor in Urology and Director of The WWAMI Institute for Simulation in Healthcare (WISH)
A Novel Therapeutic for Hereditary Kidney Disease
We developed a robotic platform that can manufacture human kidney organoids (‘mini-kidneys’) to simultaneously test thousands of candidate compounds.
UW DEPTS: Medicine/Nephrology and Pathology
UW RESEARCHERS: Louisa Helms, Ivan Gomez, Nelly M. Cruz, Jonathan Himmelfarb, Benjamin S. Freedman